Trump news live: Trump cashes in on historic mug shot with ‘never surrender’ merch as last co-defendants booked at jail

In the annals of American history, few mugshots are so iconic that they end up in history books. When they do, though, they become cultural touchstones, evocative of the times and tumult in which they were taken.

Certainly, the mugshot of the 45^th President of the United States, indicted for his alleged role in conspiring to subvert the 2020 election in Georgia, is one of those images. Future historians will look at it as one of the defining photos of our era, one marked by deep divisions and the irreconcilable realities the two Americas – that of the Trumpian movement, and that of the rest of us – find ourselves in.

Skylar Baker-Jordan writes:

Here’s what we know about the case and what’s next for Mr Trump in Georgia.

A Fox News contributor suggested that Donald Trump’s call to Georgia election officials asking them to “find votes” was simply a request for a recount and not an attempt to subvert the state’s election results.

In the wake of Mr Trump’s fourth indictment — this time in Fulton County, Georgia, where he is accused of trying to reverse the state’s 2020 presidential election results — Fox News contributor and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley offered an assessment of why the charges against the former president are bogus.

“I think this is criminalizing the challenging of elections,” he said during Thursday night’s edition of Hannity on Fox News. “Basically, you have a Democratic prosecutor saying, ‘How dare you challenge a Democratic victory?’”

Donald Trump was captured glaring at the camera in the first such photograph of a former president in US history, yet another extraordinary moment for the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.

After spending about 20 minutes at the jail on Thursday evening, the 77-year-old former president repeated the claim that Willis’s prosecution – along with the others he faces – is politically motivated.

“What has taken place here is a travesty of justice,” he told reporters. “I did nothing wrong, and everybody knows it.”

One of the final defendants to surrender, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, turned himself in early on Friday and was released on $100,000 bond, records show.

Trump has not yet entered a plea in the Georgia case. He has pleaded not guilty in two federal cases accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 election and retaining classified documents after leaving office, and to a New York state case linked to hush money payments to a porn star.

One of Donald Trump‘s co-defendants in a wide-ranging election-fraud case in Georgia remained behind bars yesterday, after he told a judge that he could not afford a private attorney to represent him and was denied bond.

Harrison Floyd said at his first court appearance that he could not afford a private lawyer and had been denied representation by a public defender because he did not qualify.

Mr Floyd, who appeared virtually, said that it typically cost between $40,000 to $100,000 just to retain a private lawyer to fly to Georgia.

“I cannot afford an attorney for something like this,” he said, telling Fulton County Superior Court Judge Emily Richardson that he did not want to put his family in debt.

The judge told him that he could either hire a lawyer or represent himself.

It was not immediately clear why Mr Floyd was told he could not be represented by a public defender. Generally, defendants must meet certain financial requirements to qualify.

For now, he will remain in Fulton County Jail, which is being investigated by the US Department of Justice for violence and unsanitary conditions, as well as 15 inmate deaths last year. One of those was a man whose family says in a lawsuit was “eaten alive” by bedbugs.

Former president Donald Trump posted his first tweet on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday evening when he shared his mug shot after he had been arrested in Fulton County, Georgia.

Mr Trump’s account had been suspended under the social media platform’s previous ownership for his incitement of the January 6 riot.

Former president Donald Trump proclaimed his innocence Thursday evening after being booked at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia on racketeering charges.

The former president spoke to reporters after he was booked and had his mugshot taken at the Fulton County Jail after a grand jury indicted him for his scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

The now twice-impeached, four-times-indicted Mr Trump called his arrest a sad day for the country.

Former president Donald Trump on Thursday has been released from custody after he surrendered and was briefly placed under arrest by officers with the Fulton County, Georgia sheriff’s department at the Fulton County jail in northwest Atlanta.

Mr Trump, who was indicted on 15 August following a sprawling election interference probe overseen by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was booked into the Fulton County jail on 13 separate charges, including a single charge of allegedly violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute.

The former president’s surrender comes after many of his highest-profile co-defendants cycled in and out of the same facility in recent days, including his former personal lawyer, ex-New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Mark Meadows, his last White House chief of staff.