Former President Donald Trump turned himself in at Georgia’s Fulton County jail on Thursday evening, with this latest move in his numerous legal fights standing out in part because it’s expected to yield a mug shot.
See: Donald Trump’s mug shot could become ‘the most famous in the world’
Trump’s private plane landed in Atlanta around 7 p.m. Eastern, and a motorcade took him directly to the Fulton County jail in Atlanta. After about 20 minutes of processing inside the jail, the motorcade then took him back to his plane for his return to New Jersey.
Trump made a brief statement before boarding his plane, calling his indictment a “travesty of justice.”
Fulton County’s booking system recorded Trump as having “blonde or strawberry” hair, a height of 6-foot-3 and weighing 215 pounds.
Trump was quickly released on a $200,000 bond and will now wait until an arraignment next month to enter pleas in this election-interference case. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking an Oct. 23 trial date for Trump and the other 18 defendants in the case, but Trump is opposing that start date.
Earlier in the day, Trump replaced his lead counsel, Drew Findling, with veteran criminal attorney Steven Sadow, who is known for defending a number of prominent rappers in high-profile criminal cases. The New York Times reported Trump used a commercial bail bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to post his bond, and paid him a $20,000 fee, or 10% of his bail amount.
The former president was indicted last week by a grand jury in Fulton County over his efforts to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. He faces 13 criminal counts, including racketeering, filing false documents, conspiracy to commit forgery and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
Thursday’s proceedings in Atlanta mark the fourth time that the 45th president has surrendered this year following an indictment.
Trump, the frontrunner in the undefined, also is dealing with a Manhattan case over hush-money payments, a Miami case over classified documents and a Washington, D.C., case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He has denied wrongdoing and argued all of the cases are politically motivated. Many Republican voters have agreed with his take and rallied around Trump in the past few months, leaving him with 55.4% support in primary polls, according to a RealClearPolitics moving average of surveys as of Thursday.
The Fulton County prosecutor’s case was spurred in part by a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump said Raffensperger, a Republican, should “find 11,780 votes,” or enough to erase Biden’s edge in the state.
In a post on his Truth Social platform Thursday afternoonu, Trump reiterated his assertion that the phone call was “perfect,” and he repeated his criticisms of Willis, describing her as a “Radical Left, Lowlife District Attorney.”
Willis, a Democrat, has set a Friday deadline for defendants to turn themselves, and Trump associates Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows are among the high-profile individuals who have met that deadline.
