Donald Trump has already started selling t-shirts with his mug shot and the words ‘Never Surrender’ - just hours after he surrendered to arrest in Georgia for running a mob-style criminal enterprise with the aim of overturning the 2020 presidential election.
The former president surrendered to Fulton County authorities on Thursday evening to face 13 charges in the sweeping RICO indictment.
He was booked into Fulton County Jail where he was fingerprinted and had his mug shot taken – marking a historic moment as the first current or former president to ever be captured in a booking photo.
Predictably, almost as soon as the scowling mug shot was released, the former president’s re-election campaign began using it to try to fundraise for his 2024 presidential run.
Less than 90 minutes in from his release from the Atlanta jail, the campaign sent an email to supporters saying it would give away a “free” premium cotton t-shirt featuring the historic booking photo – in exchange for a $47 donation.
The white t-shirt is plastered with Mr Trump’s mug shot along with the caption: “NEVER SURRENDER.”
In the email, his campaign writes: “Patriot, The Deep State is trying to turn President Trump into Public Enemy $1 for daring to challenge the corrupt political ruling class in Washington, D.C.
“They’ve now even forced him to take an official MUGSHOT to make him look like a criminal in front of the entire world.”
It adds: “President Trump will never surrender our mission to make America great again!”
The shirt can also be purchased from the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee website for $34.
Mr Trump also used the historic image to mark his first return to X, formerly Twitter, since his ban in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.
The former president’s account was restored in November but he was yet to post on it, instead preferring to use his platform Truth Social.
Trump campaign is trying to sell t shirts with his mug shot on— (Trump campaign/Twitter)
In his first post-ban tweet, he shared his mug shot alongside a link to his fundraising website on Thursday night.
The blatant effort to fundraise off the image comes as little surprise given that Mr Trump immediately sent fundraising emails off the back of his other three arrests.
But in each of those arrests, Mr Trump has avoided having to sit for a mug shot.
This time round, Fulton County officials vowed that the former president would be treated the same as any other defendant in their county.
The former president flew on his private jet Trump Force One from his Bedminster golf club to Atlanta, Georgia, to surrender to authorities on Thursday evening – a time he is said to have deliberately orchestrated to optimise on primetime coverage.
He was booked into the jail as inmate number P01135809 and had his height recorded as 6ft3 and weight as 215 pounds.
The latter raised several eyebrows – coming 25 pounds lighter than the weight recorded at his April arrest in New York, with CNN reporting that Mr Trump’s team self-reported his weight rather than being measured at the jail.
Bond was set for Mr Trump at $200,000 with him paying 10 percent in order to be released.
Following his arrest, he flew back to Bedminster and gave an interview to right-wing network Newsmax where he fumed that he’d had a “terrible experience” – despite admitting he had been “treated very nicely” at the jail.
Several of Mr Trump’s 18 codefendants in the case – including former Mr Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – had already surrendered prior to Mr Trump but a handful are yet to do so.
They all have a deadline of noon ET on Friday.
All 19 of the defendants were charged with violating Georgia’s RICO statute.
The indictment accuses Mr Trump and his allies of orchestrating and running a criminal enterprise in Fulton County, Georgia, and elsewhere, to “accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to seize the presidential term of office, beginning on January 20, 2021”.
“This criminal organization constituted an enterprise as that term is defined in O.C.G.A. § l6-14-3(3), that is, a group of individuals associated in fact. The Defendants and other members and associates of the enterprise had connections and relationships with one another and with the enterprise,” it reads.
The criminal organisation’s members and associates “engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury”.
Former President Donald Trump is shown in a police booking mug shot released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office— (via REUTERS)
The other co-defendants are former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell, attorneys John Eastman, Kenneth Cheseboro, Jenna Ellis, Ray Smith III, and Robert Cheeley, former US Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, former Trump campaign official Michael Roman, former state senator and the former chair of the Georgia Republican Party David Schafer, Georgia state senator Shawn Still, Lutheran pastor Stephen Lee, mixed martial artist Harrison Floyd, Kanye West’s former PR Trevian Kutti, former head of the Republican Party in Coffee County Cathleen Latham, Atlanta-area bail bondsman Scott Hall, and former election supervisor of Coffee County Misty Hampton.
DA Willis has spent more than two years investigating efforts by Mr Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in the crucial swing state.
The investigation came following the release of a 2 January 2021 phone call Mr Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he told him to “find” enough votes to change the outcome of the election in the state.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr Trump is heard saying in the leaked phone call. “Because we won the state.”
Mr Biden won the state by less than 12,000 votes.
The investigation then expanded from that phone call to include a scheme whereby a group of fake Republican electors planned to falsely certify the results in Mr Trump’s favour instead of Mr Biden’s. The plot failed and the fake electors have since reached immunity deals with DA Willis’ office.
Ms Willis said she would like to try the defendants altogether and within the next six months.
In total, the former president is now facing 91 charges from four separate criminal cases.
On 1 August, he was hit with a federal indictment charging him with four counts over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, following an investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith’s office.
This came after Mr Smith’s office charged Mr Trump in a separate indictment over his alleged mishandling of classified documents on leaving office.
Back in April, Mr Trump was charged for the first time with New York state charges following an investigation into hush money payments made prior to the 2016 election.
