The most famous mugshot in American history

On Aug. 24, law enforcement officials booked former President Donald J. Trump into Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail as Inmate #P01135809 after a grand jury indicted him on 13 counts alleging that he conspired to steal votes cast in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and overturn his narrow defeat to Joe Biden. It was the fourth time in the last five months that Trump faced arrest and indictment before making bond and going free, and it promised to crowd his run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination with even more trials and an endless array of legal bills.

Trump owned the moment, as he usually does when publicity is available, orchestrating his booking so that it fell in prime time and posing for an angry mugshot that rallied his supporters and avoided the enforced humility that often befalls public officials in the same situation. Trump’s minions quickly removed the Fulton County Seal from the digital version of the photo so that Trump could release it on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, along with the defiant phrases, “Election Interference” and “Never Surrender.” His niece Mary Trump immediately responded by posting, “Except When You Do,” and there followed a social media firestorm as supporters and detractors posted a flurry of messages, memes, howling attacks, and enthusiastic defenses of the most polarizing political figure of our lifetimes.

Then came the mugs, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and assorted paraphernalia featuring the mugshot. Trump’s campaign said they raised $7 million in a matter of days with the photograph and associated merchandise, while opponents produced concert-style T-shirts featuring photographs of Trump and his 18 co-defendants that read, “Trump – the RICO Tour” (RICO stands for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and is a federal law typically used to prosecute organized crime. Georgia prosecutors relied heavily on a similar RICO act in their state to prosecute Trump). Eight of the 18 co-defendants are attorneys, and 40 other lawyers across the country face ethics complaints related to attempts to select false electors or steal ballots in the 2020 election. The ethics investigations prompted some internet critics to suggest that MAGA, or “Make America Great Again,” which is Trump’s long-standing campaign slogan, really stands for “Making Attorneys Get Attorneys.”

In the midst of the insanity it is easy to forget that Trump also has been indicted in New York, for allegedly making hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels; in Florida for allegedly illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and refusing to return them multiple times; and in Washington, D.C., for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election and taking steps that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In other words, four separate grand juries — two state and two federal — have concluded enough evidence exists to charge a former president with over 90 separate crimes. That fact alone is astonishing, unprecedented, and seems to matter little to his most ardent supporters, who see conspiracy and double standards behind every charge.

How all of this will play out is impossible to know. What we can say for certain is that nothing remotely similar has happened before in American history. It defies reason to believe that somehow all the evidence produced in the four investigations is somehow manufactured, and it is worth noting that the specific charges against Trump are all available online where we can judge them for ourselves. So is much of the evidence, from the recording of Trump calling the Georgia Secretary of State to lobby for help finding 11,000 votes after the 2020 election to the photographs of classified documents in boxes in bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago.

And it is worth noting that Trump may already be legally barred from holding federal office. In a forthcoming article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review entitled “The Sweep and Force of Section Three,” prominent conservative scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulson (who are both are law professors and members of the Federalist Society) conclude that Section Three of the 14th Amendment bars anyone from holding federal office who held federal office previously and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion. By their reading of Section Three and their understanding of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, that precludes him from ever holding federal office again.

Whether Baude and Paulson are correct, or whether the courts would agree with such an interpretation of the 14th Amendment, is impossible to know. What we can know for certain is that next year is going to be difficult for all of us as Americans. Donald Trump must have his days in court. He is innocent until proven guilty, as we all are, and he must be held accountable if he is guilty of breaking the law, as we all must. But no matter what happens there is certain to be raucous disagreement and possibly acts of violence, and it remains our responsibility as citizens to be informed, to vote our conscience, and to support the laws and institutions of our land.

Many nations have tried and even convicted their leaders. They are as liable to succumb to temptations of wealth and power and to break the law as the rest of us, and perhaps even more so. Yet trials and convictions are not evidence of broken societies. Instead, they are evidence of an imperfect but functioning legal system, just as elections are proof of an often imperfect but still functioning democracy.

Our goal, and the obligation we have to our children, is to not give up on the system. We must allow the Trump trials to take their course and then agree to live with the consequences and move forward.

The mugshot is just the beginning.

Lance Janda holds a PhD in History from the University of Oklahoma and has more than 30 years of experience in higher education. He is the author of “Stronger Than Custom: West Point and the Admission of Women”, among other works.