Donald Trump has amped up false claims about his criminal case in Fulton County ahead of Thursday’s presidential debate in Atlanta.
One that’s caught steam in recent days is a statement the former president made in a campaign fundraising appeal that “they tortured me in the Fulton County jail.”
“I want you to remember what they did to me. They tortured me in the Fulton County Jail and TOOK MY MUG SHOT,” read an email sent Monday from the Republican. It sought to sell supporters a $47 coffee mug featuring a photoshopped mugshot of Trump above the words “not guilty.”
The fundraising email comes as Trump seeks to rally his base ahead of Thursday’s debate in Georgia, a swing state which helped hand the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. And it surfaces at a time when lawmakers from both parties have voiced worries about the nation’s preparedness for foreign disinformation during the presidential election.
There’s no evidence that Trump was tortured or mistreated when he surrendered at the Fulton jail after being indicted on 13 felony counts last August. But it’s just the latest of many lies, exaggerations and half-truths the former president has made over the years about the Fulton case, District Attorney Fani Willis and other prosecutors who have scrutinized him in recent years.
Trump has mischaracterized crime statistics in Atlanta and accused Willis and other Black prosecutors of targeting him because he is white. More recently, he has called himself a “political prisoner” and declared that a New York judge wanted “to sentence me to death.”
Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at the non-partisan RAND Corporation, wouldn’t comment on Trump directly but said more broadly that “false stories sell.”
“It’s just too easy to fabricate material and obviously it pays, in terms of audience interaction, in terms of funding the candidates can get,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that are willing to believe this stuff. Or even if they don’t believe it, they want to believe it.”
Trump’s inflammatory language has corresponded with a surge in campaign donations that has helped close a fundraising gap with the Biden campaign. Last month, when he was convicted in Manhattan on 34 felony charges related to the falsification of business records, Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and a related super PAC announced they had raked in a staggering $171 million in donations.
Georgia on his mind
Trump hasn’t hesitated to go on the offensive in Georgia even before a Fulton grand jury handed up an indictment accusing Trump and 18 of his allies of participating in a criminal racketeering conspiracy designed to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 election.
He has accused Willis of engaging in a political “witch hunt” against him, ignoring election fraud in Georgia and presiding over a sharp rise of violent crime and being motivated by racism.
Investigations by multiple law enforcement agencies, including Trump’s Justice Department, found there was no widespread fraud in Georgia. Homicides and crime rates have trended downward, especially compared to the levels logged during the height of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Willis has been criticized for spearheading two other large-scale racketeering cases that ensnared almost exclusively Black defendants: the 2013 Atlanta Public Schools cheating case and the current Young Slime Life gang case involving the rapper Young Thug.
Last summer, Trump peddled a baseless rumor that Willis had engaged in a romantic relationship with a gang member and former client. His campaign offered no evidence beyond mentioning a Rolling Stone article that said no such thing.
As for his time at the Fulton jail, Trump spent roughly 20 minutes at the facility, known informally as Rice Street. Even though the jail has become notorious for its troubles — the Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation last year after more than 60 inmates died in custody between 2009 and 2022 — the former president spent far less time there than the hours the average person often has to wait to be booked.
Trump was whisked into the building under Secret Service protection and deputies from the Fulton Sheriff’s Office arranged for the paperwork for his $200,000 bond to be brought to him in his motorcade “so that we could get him in and off the premises as quickly as possible,” Sheriff Pat Labat told CNN.
Once inside the building, deputies took Trump’s fingerprints and a mug shot, the first-ever of a former president. Inside the jail is where Trump met Charles Shaw, CEO of Foster Bail Bonds LLC, the Lawrenceville company that posted his bond.
“He thanked everyone and (said ‘I) appreciate everyone’s service involved’ and kept the process moving,” Shaw told Channel 2 Action news about his experience meeting Trump.
Labat later described the scene of Trump’s surrender as “eerily quiet.”
“He was pretty silent,” Labat said of Trump. “Our team gave very clear instructions ... He was in and out pretty quickly.”
A Labat spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Though Trump initially faced 13 felony counts in Fulton, three of them have since been struck down by a trial court judge for lacking sufficient detail. The DA’s office has appealed that decision.
The broader case against Trump has ground to a halt as the Georgia Court of Appeals decides whether Willis should remain on the case due to a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the probe’s onetime top prosecutor. Trump’s Atlanta attorneys have also sought to have Willis removed for comments she made in January at a historically Black church in which she said critics were focusing on Wade because he is a Black man.
