There are millions of photos of Donald Trump. Flattering or ridiculous, solemn or bizarre. But one taken on Thursday, August 24 stands out from all the rest: It's a mug shot. The former American president's gaze is stony, defiant. The artificial light falls only on the left side of his face. Donald Trump formally surrendered to justice in Fulton County, Atlanta, Georgia, as part of his fourth indictment in just a few months, decided by a jury on August 14. Bail for his release was set at $200,000. So he left as he arrived: free and desperate.

Donald Trump is being prosecuted along with 18 others – including Rudolph Giuliani, his former lawyer, and Mark Meadows, who headed his White House cabinet – for fomenting a "criminal enterprise" to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia, following similar efforts in several other key states. The prosecutor, Fani Willis, is being fierce and firm with lawyers. She wants a trial as early as March 2024, but the timetable is still uncertain.

Trump's mug shot is iconic and has already been reproduced on T-shirts and posters by his own team. In fact, the billionaire marked his return to X (formerly Twitter) after two years of absence, by publishing the photo alongside the message "Never surrender!" Paradoxically, that's exactly what he'd just done. The day before, on Wednesday, the ex-president had confirmed his arrival in Atlanta on his Truth Social network: "I'll be proudly arrested tomorrow afternoon in Georgia."

He did it again on Thursday, announcing the time of his formal arrest: 7:30 pm. This bravado sums up his strategy. Instead of putting behind him his false allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Trump is digging a furrow where the truth is drowning. "The evidence is irrefutable!" he wrote on Thursday. On several occasions, he has organized parties at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in support of the Patriot Freedom Project organization, which defends those convicted in the federal investigation into the assault on the Capitol.

The collision of political and judicial calendars is both a blessing and a headache for Donald Trump. It is costing him dearly financially, and may prevent him from running a conventional primary campaign in the spring of 2024. But it has enabled him to cement his Republican base since the beginning of 2023. Trump has chosen to transform his judicial saga into a soap opera, in which he's a tragic hero, a martyr suffering for his people.

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