Donald Trump slipped a few steps into the ranks of white-collar criminals yesterday, regretfully, receiving common prisoner treatment following his arrest on 13 counts related to his attempts to falsify the 2020 election results in Georgia; some attempts that he and 18 collaborators and now his co-defendants carried out through extortion of the mafia type, according to the legal qualification of the Fulton County prosecutor’s office.
The sheriff of that county, Patrick Labat, threatened with death as a result of the accusation as well as the prosecutor Fani Willis, immediately released the mugshot of “inmate number P01135809, Donald Trump”, as he had done with those of his alleged co-defendants who had turned themselves in before, such as his former lawyer and former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, or his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
In the Sheriff’s office registry, Trump was registered as “77-year-old male, blond or reddish hair, blue eyes, height 1.91 meters and weight 97.5 kilos”: 11 less than halfway through his term. , according to a report by the White House physician in 2018.
As planned and agreed in advance with his lawyers, the former president was immediately released on bail of 200,000 euros.
The process culminated in the historic and somewhat grotesque photograph of Trump, the first from a mugshot of a former president of the United States, in fact lasted very little: about twenty minutes from the time the former president arrived at the Fulton prison, shortly after seven. and a half in the afternoon on Thursday (one thirty in the morning on Friday in Spain).
The arrival of the famous defendant was of course spectacular, in a caravan made up of about 15 black armored vans and an ambulance; a larger convoy than the one that usually transports the president of the country, which was what it was about.
The formation left the Atlanta airport after the landing of the defendant in his no less impressive plane, unmistakable hundreds of meters away due to the huge sign with his last name that runs along the fuselage.
The round trip, departing and returning from the closest airfield to the tycoon’s residence and golf club in New Jersey, filled the evening schedule of all US cable television channels. A new show from the Trump brand.
Once the judicial and police procedure was completed, it remained to be seen if the leader and candidate for re-election in the 2024 presidential elections would turn his mugshot of a defiant and somewhat humorous gesture into a campaign poster.
So it was.
To begin with, Trump published the mugshot in his first tweet on the X network -formerly Twitter- after his readmission to it, last November, by “popular” decision promoted by the new owner of the medium, Elon Musk. The ultra former president had been expelled almost two years earlier for his role as instigator of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In his return message, Trump seasoned the photo on his file with a predictable reiteration of his repeated denunciation of the proceedings against him as judicial manipulation to prevent his return to the White House: “Electoral interference,” he repeated. And he added: “Never give up.”
The prisoner of justice and presidential candidate also posted his photo on his campaign website, along with the request for donations, as well as on his own network, Truth Social.
The use of such a photo as an electoral claim does not seem unreasonable -and even less in the case of Trump-, given the success of the victimization strategy with which until now, helped by the leaders of the Republican Party, he has managed to turn each of his accusations into a new momentum in the polls with a view to 2024.
The formula for such success is neither more nor less than a full-fledged challenge to the rule of law under the thesis that all the accusations made by the prosecutors of the four criminal cases that he accumulates against him, accusations approved by dozens of citizens of the corresponding grand juries and supervised by different judges, they are part of a huge conspiracy of the “Deep State” led by Joe Biden to implement justice in order to prevent him from returning to power.
Trump did not stop repeating the same thesis this Thursday, on foot by plane, before flying back to his residence after the bad drink in the Fulton prison: “What has happened here is a parody of justice. I have not done anything wrong and everyone knows it, ”he said.
The 13 indictments against the ultra leader in the Georgia case are added, it must be remembered, to the 78 charges that he was already facing for the three criminal cases filed against him since the end of March; the assault on the Capitol and other attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in different states, including Georgia (4 crimes); the one related to the concealment of hundreds of secret papers in his residence in Mar-a-Lago (40 charges), and the one corresponding to the falsification of dozens of accounting documents to mask the bribery of the porn actress Stormy Daniels (34 charges).
Trump avoided and scorned the first debate between Republican candidates for the primaries for the 2024 elections, held on Wednesday under the organization of the Fox network and sponsorship of the Republican Party. The snub of his absence did not prevent six of the eight candidates who did participate in the discussion from committing themselves during the act to supporting the former president if, in the event of winning them in the primaries, he were convicted by justice.
So much loyalty from the rivals, in affront to the actions of the judiciary in a democratic country, was shocking even within the current parameters of this country. Especially when, at the same time, the leader thus backed despised those rivals in an interview designed precisely to counterprogram their debate and in which he went so far as to say that none of them deserved to run for president.
Also the fact that the first ex-president of the United States criminally charged uses the photo of his mugshot as propaganda can be shocking, no matter how logical it may be at this time.
But what else? For now, in the United States, life remains the same. Especially political life in the republican field.
