Trump fundraises off arrest, mug shot

Former President Trump is using his surrender at the Fulton County, Ga., Jail on Thursday evening, when he became the first U.S. president in history to have his mug shot taken, to raise funds for his 2024 campaign.  

“Today, at the notoriously violent jail in Fulton County, Georgia, I was ARRESTED despite having committed NO CRIME,” Trump said in a personal note on his campaign website, featuring his mug shot.

“Today, I walked into the lion’s den with one simple message on behalf of our entire movement: I WILL NEVER SURRENDER OUR MISSION TO SAVE AMERICA,” he said, adding, “If you can, please make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history.”

The Trump campaign is also selling merchandise, including T-shirts, mugs, koozies and bumper stickers, featuring his mug shot and the phrase “Never surrender.”

The former president was indicted last week alongside 18 others in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s years-long investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

The charges marked Trump’s fourth indictment this year, following federal indictments over his handling of classified materials and his alleged efforts to block the transfer of power after the 2020 election and a Manhattan indictment over an alleged 2016 hush money payment. 

Despite having been booked on three prior indictments, the mug shot Trump had taken Thursday in Georgia was his first; he was not required to take mug shots the last three times he surrendered to authorities. 

However, Fulton County officials had maintained that they would stick to their normal procedure of taking a mug shot of defendants who are booked at the jail. 

Mug shots of Trump’s co-defendants, such as former lawyers John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, have also circulated in recent days, as the defendants in the indictment face a Friday deadline to surrender.