Closed face, frowning eyebrows, defiant gaze: Donald Trump was subjected to a mug shot in an Atlanta prison on Thursday, a first for a former president in the history of the United States.
He had escaped during his three previous criminal charges, but the billionaire candidate, accused of having tried to manipulate the results of the 2020 presidential election, did not cut this cliché with a potentially infamous effect.
This “mugshot”, made in the services of the sheriff of the capital of the State of Georgia, instantly found itself on the front page of the American media and made the rounds of social networks.
This photo also marked the return of the former president to Twitter, now X: Donald Trump published the solemn snapshot, accompanied by the message “Never surrender!”, illustrating his desire to fight what he considers to be a “witch hunt” orchestrated by President Joe Biden.
His last post on this platform, once his favorite communication channel, was in January 2021. He was banned after the attack on the US Congress led by his supporters, but this suspension has since been lifted.
Donald Trump is now “on file” like any litigant prosecuted, with his detailed physical characteristics: 1m90, 98kg, strawberry blond hair. And registration number P01135809.
Released thanks to the payment of a bond of 200,000 dollars, the favorite of the Republican primaries for the presidential election of 2024 quickly left the prison of Atlanta in a motorized convoy placed under high security.
Just after having had to undergo this legal procedure and before boarding his private plane again, he denounced a “simulacrum of justice” and “election interference” on the part of the authorities of the State of Georgia who charged.
“I did nothing wrong” by questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden, assured the Republican tribune.
Several of the former president’s 18 co-defendants had already passed through Fulton County Jail, an overcrowded and notoriously unsanitary facility, this week.
All were charged on August 14 with unlawful attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 election, won in this key state by current Democratic President Joe Biden.
The law on organized crime, used by the prosecutor to jointly charge the 19 defendants, provides for sentences of five to twenty years in prison.
The defendants are expected to return to Atlanta, this time in court, the week of Sept. 5, likely to announce whether or not they plead guilty.
Legal setbacks are piling up for Mr. Trump, a former reality TV star who has been criminally charged for the fourth time in less than six months.
The septuagenarian is accused in New York of suspicious payments to a former actress of X movies, and by federal justice of electoral pressure during the presidential election of 2020 as well as of negligent management of confidential documents after his departure from the White House.
The former president has pleaded not guilty in all of these cases.
But, very paradoxically, each twist also brings him millions of dollars in campaign donations, paid by Trumpists convinced that he is the victim of a political cabal.
The American president, candidate for his re-election, is careful not to comment on the legal troubles of Donald Trump, anxious not to fuel his accusations of instrumentalization of justice.
Mr. Trump’s passage through prison in Georgia came the day after the first major presidential meeting of 2024, the Republican primary debate, organized in Wisconsin.
The former real estate magnate snubbed this debate, justifying himself by his spectacular lead over his rivals in the polls, and preferring to speak in an interview with Tucker Carlson, former star host of the conservative channel Fox News, broadcast on X at the same time.
bur-iba-sst-cjc/led
08/25/2023 04:18:51 – Atlanta (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
