Former US president Donald Trump was arrested at a Georgia jail on Thursday on racketeering and conspiracy charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election results in the southern state.
During a brief period lasting approximately 20 minutes, the 77-year-old Trump was booked on 13 charges at Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, according to records published by the sheriff’s office. Donald Trump has now become the first US president to have his mugshot taken.
Afterwards, Trump quickly disappeared into a motorcade waiting outside the jail.
As he left the Atlanta airport, Trump delivered a brief statement to reporters, denying wrongdoing and reiterating that he had the right to challenge his defeat in the 2020 election.
“We have every right — every single right — to challenge an election that we think is dishonest,” Trump said, offering a preview of his defence strategy.
He also turned the allegation of election meddling against the prosecutors, accusing them of trying to derail his 2024 bid for the presidency: “What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election.”
Trump had announced on social media that he would be arriving at the Fulton County Jail around 7:30 pm local time.
Following that, in the hours beforehand, dozens of supporters gathered outside the facility, waving flags and wearing pro-Trump shirts and baseball caps.
Trump was able to dodge having a mugshot taken during his previous arrests this year: in New York on charges of paying hush money to a pornstar, Stormy Daniels, in Florida for mishandling top secret government documents, and in Washington on charges of conspiring to upend his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
But Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said standard procedure in Georgia is to take a defendant’s photograph before they are released on bond — set at $200,000 in Trump’s case.
The arrest comes one day after Trump spurned a televised debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, featuring eight of his rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — all of whom lag well behind him in the polls.
He still stole the spotlight, though, with all but two of the candidates saying they would support him as the party’s nominee even if he were a convicted felon.
During a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News talk show host, who is Tucker Carlson — which aired on social media at the same time as the debate — Trump dismissed the criminal cases filed against him as “nonsense.”
Trump said the Justice Department had been “weaponized” under Biden in order to hamstring his White House bid.
Willis, the Georgia district attorney, initially proposed that the racketeering case begin in March next year, the same month Trump is scheduled to go on trial in New York on charges of paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.
On Thursday, after one of the defendants asked for a speedy trial, she proposed that it begin for all 19 in October of this year, a move met with an immediate objection from Trump’s lawyers.
The Florida case, in which Trump is accused of taking secret government documents as he left the White House and refusing to return them, is scheduled to begin in May.
