Georgia Criminal Case Against Trump (2020 Election)

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      Catch the Smug Mug on That Thug!

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      WASHINGTON — If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray.As with Oscar Wilde’s charismatic and amoral narcissist, the Picture of Donald Trump should have been a “foul parody,” a reflection of what the chancer has done with his life. It should have shown Trump’s corroding soul rather than his truculent face.It should have revealed a man so cynical and depraved that he is willing to smash our nation’s soul — our democracy — and destroy faith in our institutions. All this simply to avoid being called a loser.“Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away,” Wilde wrote of Dorian’s portrait. “The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.”Now that would have been some primo merch: Trump slapping a rotting mug shot on a mug and selling it on his campaign website for the low, low price of $25.Trump has long felt that squinting or scowling is a good look for him. Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer, recalled that Trump once told him that Clint Eastwood was the greatest movie star ever, and O’Brien believed that Donald and Melania modeled their squints on Eastwood’s. Maggie Haberman noted in The Times that when Trump posed for his official White House portrait, he scowled into the camera and told aides he thought he looked “like Churchill.”Thursday night was performative for Trump: sweeping in with his private jet and giant motorcade that screamed two-tiered justice system, with law enforcement clearing the Atlanta streets, like centurions clearing the way for Caesar.Trump told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly after the arraignment that he had “never heard the word ‘mug shot’” until his was taken — which just shows again that Trump is a pathological liar. Everyone in America has heard the term “mug shot.”Trump said that being booked at the horror chamber known as the Fulton County Jail — its location on Rice Street is cited in songs by rappers who have logged time there — was “a terrible experience.”“I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then, I’ve gone through the same experience three other times,” the 77-year-old said, adding about his mug shot, “They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.”They didn’t teach him not to be a big liar and cheat, either. Wharton is a place where they should teach you about mug shots. All American business schools should have a class on mug shots.Trump did another woe-is-me interview with Fox News Digital, admitting that getting processed by Georgia officials, who “insisted” he have the mug shot taken, was “not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.”He no doubt workshopped his stroppy mug-shot look in front of the mirror, trying to convey “Never surrender!” as he was literally surrendering. And in another master stroke of projection, he accused the prosecutors pursuing him for election interference of “election interference.”But Trump is feral and cunning, and deep in his amygdala, he must have shivered, thinking to himself, “Damn, I could go to prison. My liberty is actually at risk.” Even though he has spent his whole life getting away with things, sliding out of things, stiffing people, conning people, he had to have a moment at the jail when he realized he is in the prosecutors’ sights. He even went out and hired a real criminal lawyer.Perplexing as it is, Trump devotees continue to adore him. President Biden sarcastically called Trump a “handsome guy,” but many on the right thrilled to his jailhouse portrait. “I say this with an unblemished record of heterosexuality,” Jesse Watters swooned on “The Five” on Fox News. “He looks good, and he looks hard.”At the Republican debate, no one was big enough to shove him aside. Nikki Haley seemed the most appealing. Ron DeSantis’s inability to smile is disqualifying. It was pathetic that the best the Florida governor could muster, asked if Mike Pence acted properly when he certified the election, was to say, “I got no beef with him.”Vivek Ramaswamy seemed smarmy. Scott Jennings, a Republican commentator on CNN, said that Ramaswamy was Scrappy-Doo to Trump’s Scooby-Doo. That comparison is not fair to Scooby or Scrappy, who are positive forces in the world, helping to unmask crooks, unlike Trump and his mini-me.On Friday afternoon, Trump put out a fund-raising pitch based on his 20 minutes in hell.“It’s violent,” Trump said of the jail where, as he let his fans know in his fund-raising email, he was given booking number 2313827. “The building is falling apart. Inmates have dug their fingers into the crumbling walls and ripped out chunks to fashion over 1,000 shanks. Just this year alone, 7 inmates have died in that jail.”Yep, he’s getting scared.As Audrey Hepburn said in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” after she tangled with the law, “There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Mug Shot: ‘Not Comfortable’ but Potentially Lucrative

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      The former president’s campaign immediately began fund-raising off his booking photo and started selling merchandise featuring it.Former President Donald J. Trump has done his best to appear unfazed and unbowed by having been indicted four times since March, but even he acknowledged that he did not enjoy one particular element of his booking in Georgia on Thursday night on racketeering charges: the mug shot.“It is not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong,” he told Fox News’s website in an interview afterward.Nonetheless, he made the most of it.Not long after the release of the mug shot — the first taken of Mr. Trump in any of the criminal proceedings he faces and the first known to have been taken of any former president — it appeared prominently on Mr. Trump’s campaign website, under a “personal note from President Donald J. Trump.”At the bottom were several tabs users could click to donate to his campaign in small-dollar increments.Mr. Trump quickly posted the picture on X, marking his return to the platform formerly known as Twitter for the first time since he was banned by the company’s former ownership following the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.The joint fund-raising website his campaign helps maintain immediately started offering mugs, beverage coolers and T-shirts in different colors and sizes with the mug shot and the words, “Never Surrender!” (Those words despite the fact that the photo was taken upon his surrender to authorities in Georgia.)Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., posted on X a link to his own website featuring merchandise with the photo. The younger Mr. Trump said he would donate proceeds from the sales to a legal-defense fund that his father’s advisers had set up to assist with bills accrued by people who are witnesses in the cases.By late afternoon Friday, the Trump campaign had sent an email blast with the photo and Mr. Trump’s booking number.The mug shot represented perhaps the former president’s best chance to juice his fund-raising numbers in several weeks, after raising several million dollars following his March indictment in New York on charges related to hush-money payments to a porn actress but seeing that figure drop after the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, filed charges against him in June for mishandling national security documents.Even before the mug shot was snapped at the jail in Atlanta, an email from his joint fund-raising committee primed his supporters by saying, “It’s been reported that if I am unjustly indicted and arrested in the Atlanta Witch Hunt, a mug shot will be taken of me.”Campaign officials did not make overnight fund-raising figures public on Friday morning.In a sign of how politically valuable the Trump campaign anticipated the mug shot could be to its fund-raising, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, Chris LaCivita, issued a warning on social media — with 11 siren emojis — to political entities that might seek to profit from the photo by using it to suggest a connection to the Trump campaign.“If you are a campaign, PAC, scammer and you try raising money off the mugshot of @realDonaldTrump and you have not received prior permission …WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU you will NOT SCAM DONORS,” he wrote on X. The photo was released by the Fulton County sheriff’s department and is a public document.Mr. Trump has never shied away from opportunities to wring financial benefit from what is happening in his life and career. But in this case the personal and the political were mixed in ways that he acknowledged were out of the ordinary even by his standards.“They insisted on a mug shot and I agreed to do that,” Mr. Trump told Fox News’s website after he was booked on a lengthy list of charges stemming from his efforts to remain in power after his election loss. “This is the only time I’ve ever taken a mug shot.”(President Biden, vacationing in Lake Tahoe, was asked by a reporter if he had seen the mugshot. “I did see it on television. Handsome guy,” he said.)In the New York case, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, opted against a mug shot, which is used to identify criminal defendants in case they flee while awaiting trial. Federal officials came to the same conclusion that there was no need to take another picture of Mr. Trump, arguably one of the most recognizable faces on the planet.But in Fulton County, Ga., on Thursday, officials adhered strictly to protocol, even as Mr. Trump appeared at the jail with news helicopters tracking his motorcade.That decision left some of Mr. Trump’s rivals unsettled.“I think it’s disgraceful,” said Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, on Fox News on Friday. “I mean, the idea that we’re seeing a mug shot of a 77-year-old former president. I mean, how did we get to this point? And I don’t know that anyone in America should look at that and feel good about it.” More

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      Former Justice Department Official Is Booked in Trump Georgia Case

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      As of late Friday morning, only one of the 19 defendants in the state election interference case involving former President Donald J. Trump had yet to turn himself in.Jeffrey A. Clark, the former high-ranking Justice Department official criminally charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss in that state, was booked at the Fulton County Jail early on Friday, a few hours after the former president’s dramatic booking at the same Atlanta facility.After Mr. Clark’s surrender and that of another defendant, Trevian C. Kutti, only one of the 19 defendants in the state election interference case — Stephen C. Lee, an Illinois pastor — had yet to turn himself in as of late Friday morning. The office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis gave the defendants a deadline of noon Friday to turn themselves in. After that point, arrest warrants for outstanding defendants would be put into effect.Mr. Clark, a former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, was released on a $100,000 bond. In addition to the state racketeering charge, he faces a felony charge of criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings, based on a letter he wanted to send in December 2020 to state officials in Georgia that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” that would affect the state’s election results.Several of the defendants, including Mr. Clark, are seeking to have their cases shifted to federal court, a relatively uncommon step that is known as removal. Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones rejected efforts by Mr. Clark and another defendant, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, to prevent them from being booked at the county jail while they were seeking removal of their cases to federal court.Ms. Kutti, a music publicist who prosecutors say harassed an election worker on Mr. Trump’s behalf, surrendered to the jail on Friday morning and was booked into the jail’s system, online records showed. She was released on $75,000 bond. Ms. Kutti has represented musicians like R. Kelly and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye, in the past. More

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      A Trump Mug Shot for History

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      The former president’s booking photo is unprecedented. And that’s just the beginning of its significance.As soon as it was taken, it became the de facto picture of the year. A historic image that will be seared into the public record and referred to for perpetuity — the first mug shot of an American president, taken by the Fulton County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office after Donald J. Trump’s fourth indictment. Though because it is also the only mug shot, it may be representative of all of the charges.As such, it is also a symbol of either equality under the law or the abuse of it — the ultimate memento of a norm-shattering presidency and this social-media-obsessed, factionalized age.“It’s dramatically unprecedented,” said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University. “Of all the millions, maybe billions of photos taken of Donald Trump, this could stand as the most famous. Or notorious.” It is possible, he added, that in the future the mug shot will seem like the ultimate bookend to a political arc in the United States that began decades ago, with Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”In the photo, Mr. Trump is posed against a plain gray backdrop, just like the 11 of his fellow defendants whose mug shots were taken before him, including Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani.As with them, his face is lit from above by a blinding white flash that hits his ash blond hair like a spotlight. As usual, he is dressed in the colors of the American flag: navy suit, white shirt, bright red tie — though his typical flag lapel pin is either absent or invisible in the picture. He glowers out from beneath his brows, unsmiling, eyes rendered oddly bloodshot, brow furrowed, chin tucked in, as if he is about to head-butt the camera. The image is stark, shorn of the flags and fancy that have been Mr. Trump’s preferred framings for photo ops at Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower, or during his term in office, and that communicate power and the gilded glow of success.Was the photo necessary? In the last few years, a number of police departments and newsrooms around the country have been rethinking the practice of releasing mug shots to the public, viewing them as prejudicial at a time when a subject has not yet been proved guilty. The prosecutors in the other three Trump cases, both state and federal, have refrained from taking mug shots of Mr. Trump at all, given that he is one of the most recognizable people in the world and not considered a flight risk. Georgia laws, however, dictate that a mug shot be taken for a felony offense, and the Georgia sheriff in charge of booking has said that all defendants will be treated equally.Either way, it is part of the pageantry of the moment, part of the theater of law. And Mr. Trump is a man who has always understood the power and language of theater. Of putting on a show. Of the way an image can be used for viral communication and opinion-making.That’s part of why the “would they or wouldn’t they” discussion about mug shots resurfaced each time an indictment was handed down. In its concrete reality, the Fulton County mug shot may seem more irrevocable than anything else that has happened in the Trump cases thus far — at least until the two sides enter a courtroom. Perhaps that is why the concept alone started trending on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, even before Mr. Trump had boarded a plane to Georgia to surrender.While very few voters are likely to have read any of the Trump indictments in full, they will almost all definitely see the mug shot, and the former president — who posted this one on his recently reinstated feed on X, not long after it was released — cares deeply about his pictures. He always has.As far back as 2016, he was complaining about photos of him that NBC had used, especially one that he said showed him with a double chin. In 2017 he tweeted about a CNN book on the election: “Hope it does well but used worst cover photo of me!” In 2020, when a snap of him on the White House lawn with his hair blown back in the wind went viral, he chimed in: “More Fake News. This was photoshopped, obviously, but the wind was strong and the hair looks good? Anything to demean!”And earlier this month on Truth Social, he said of the Fox News show “Fox & Friends,” “They purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back.” (The picture he seemed upset about showed him with his chin tucked in, rather than jutting out, creating the appearance of a few extra chins.) The suggestion was that this was part of the reason he would not join the first Republican primary debate.He has crowed about how generals advising him were “better looking than Tom Cruise and stronger”; insisted that the women who work for him should “dress like women,” according to Axios; and griped that Vogue never gave Melania a cover while he was in the White House.He knows that for an electorate raised on TV and social media, the picture is what lasts. It’s what is remembered (and what is memed). What makes the myth. Or unmakes it. Words come and go, but imagery is a language everyone can understand. And this latest image is clear proof of a situation that is not within the former president’s control. It cannot be airbrushed or filtered or otherwise altered.Now that it exists, however, how it will be interpreted and used is still a question.Mug shots have, through history, been weaponized in different ways. They have been used to suggest guilt and shame, and to knock down the famous, as with O.J. Simpson, whose flat stare and five o’clock shadow ended up on the cover of Time — albeit in an image darkened unnecessarily by the magazine.But mug shots have also become symbols of pride: of those who stand against abuse of power and legal wrongs, as with the mug shots of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, or even Jane Fonda, whose 1970 mug shot after she had been arrested on false charges of drug smuggling, fist raised against the Vietnam War, became a call to action for a generation of activist women.Mr. Trump and his advisers understand this all too well. Indeed, his team had most likely been planning and thinking about how Mr. Trump should look in his mug shot, what expression he should use, since the photo became a possibility.There was little chance, for example, that he would be caught smiling, like John Edwards, the former senator whose mug shot was taken in 2011 when he was indicted on a charge of violating campaign finance laws.The Trump team had, after all, already created its own joke “mug shot” with a fake height chart, an ersatz name placard and the slogan “Not Guilty” below it all after his first indictment, splashing it on T-shirts and coffee cups in his campaign store, the better to make a mockery of the whole idea. Though it is also true that his expressions in both the fake and the real photos are similarly pugnacious. He and his team have been laying the groundwork for this particular contingency for awhile. More

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      Trump Surrenders at Atlanta Jail in Georgia Election Interference Case

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      Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes at the jail, getting fingerprinted and having his mug shot taken for the first time in the four criminal cases he has faced this year.Former President Donald J. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.It was an extraordinary scene: a former U.S. president who flew on his own jet to Atlanta and surrendered at a jail compound surrounded by concertina wire and signs that directed visitors to the “prisoner intake” area.As Mr. Trump’s motorcade of black S.U.V.s drove to the jail through cleared streets, preceded by more than a dozen police motorcycles — a trip captured by news helicopters and broadcast live on national television — two worlds collided in ways never before seen in American political history. The nation’s former commander in chief walked into a notorious jail, one that has been cited in rap lyrics and is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation into unsanitary and unsafe conditions, including allegations that an “incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth.”The case is the fourth brought against Mr. Trump this year, but Thursday was the first time that he was booked at a jail.Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes there, submitting to some of the routines of criminal defendant intake. He was fingerprinted and had his mug shot taken. He was assigned an identification number, P01135809. But the process was faster than for most defendants; minutes after he entered the jail, Mr. Trump’s record appeared in Fulton County’s booking system, which listed him as having “blond or strawberry” hair, a height of 6 feet 3 inches and a weight of 215 pounds — 24 pounds less than the White House doctor reported Mr. Trump weighing in 2018.Mr. Trump’s motorcade arriving at the Fulton County jail.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesHis form was filled out in advance by aides, according to someone familiar with the preparations, not by officials at the jail.Outside, supporters and detractors of Mr. Trump had gathered all day in the swampy Atlanta heat. The news media was kept at bay. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office barred reporters from accessing the parking lot in front of the jail’s main entrance, a break with tradition.Before leaving Atlanta on his plane, Mr. Trump was defiant. The Georgia case, he said, was a “travesty of justice.”“We have every right to challenge an election we think is dishonest,” he said.The former president’s bond in the case was set at $200,000 on Monday, and he used a commercial bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to post his bond in exchange for $20,000, the bondsman confirmed.In a last minute shake-up of his legal team before he surrendered on Thursday, Mr. Trump hired Steven H. Sadow, a veteran criminal defense lawyer in Atlanta whose clients have included prominent rappers. In a filing to the court, Mr. Sadow said he was now “lead counsel of record for Donald John Trump.”Lawyers on both sides of the case filed a flurry of legal motions on Thursday. After one of the 19 defendants, the lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, demanded a speedy trial, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is prosecuting the case, asked a judge to set a trial date of Oct. 23, months earlier than she had originally sought.The Fulton County jail in Atlanta.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesMr. Trump objected to that timing, an indication that he wants to move more slowly. The judge approved the October trial date, but only for Mr. Chesebro. The ultimate date of any trial, however, will not be clear until efforts by some of the defendants to move the case to federal court are resolved.Mr. Trump is at the top of the list of 19 defendants in the indictment released last week. Prosecutors used a state version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, that they hope will allow them to show the ways in which Mr. Trump and several of his allies worked together toward the common goal of seeking to overturn the results of the election in Georgia.The RICO statute is often used against the mafia and street gangs. In the Georgia indictment, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants are accused of impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, conspiracy to defraud the state and “acts involving theft,” among other crimes.The indictment lays out the broadest set of accusations leveled against the former president so far. Georgia’s racketeering law can carry criminal penalties of between five and 20 years in prison.It is the second case centered on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith, the special counsel, brought the other, a federal case, earlier in August.Ms. Willis began her investigation after a recording of Mr. Trump was released in which he told Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, that he wanted to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to win the state and its Electoral College votes. Mr. Trump later described the call to Mr. Raffensperger as “absolutely perfect.”Protesters and supporters of Mr. Trump clashed outside the jail ahead of his arrival. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesHis defiance in the face of the four cases lodged against him has provided political oxygen for his campaign and a significant fund-raising windfall.After his first indictment in March, which charged him in a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal, Mr. Trump’s campaign reported raising $15 million in the two weeks that followed.In June, an indictment in Miami that centered on classified documents was followed by $7 million in fund-raising, Mr. Trump’s campaign reported.Hours before he was set to be booked on Thursday, Mr. Trump sent out a fund-raising email. “This arrest — and every one of these four sham indictments,” he wrote, “have all been designed to strike fear into the hearts of the American people, to intimidate you out of voting to save your country and ultimately, to interfere in the 2024 election.”In four recent polls, a majority of respondents said the criminal charges against Mr. Trump were warranted. But at the same time, Mr. Trump’s standing among Republican voters is strong, and he is holding onto a considerable lead against his Republican primary rivals.He declined to take part in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign on Wednesday, which featured eight of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination. Bret Baier, one of the debate’s moderators on Fox News, quipped that Mr. Trump was the “elephant not in the room.”A crowd began to gather outside the jail early Thursday morning.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMr. Trump is also neck and neck against President Biden in recent polls. A Quinnipiac University poll this month showed him trailing Mr. Biden by a single percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent, in a hypothetical rematch. Mr. Biden’s advantage was five percentage points in July.Outside the Fulton County jail, supporters of Mr. Trump came early in the day, hoping for a glimpse of the former president. Rick Hearn, 44, an Atlanta accountant, brought a poster with him that showed an image of Mr. Trump next to one of Nelson Mandela, with the label “political prisoners.”“I feel like I needed to be a part of this,” Mr. Hearn said,“Those in charge,” he added, need to know that they cannot “take away our rights and get away with it.”Alan Feuer More

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      Fotos policiales de los acusados de conspirar con Trump: ¿por qué sonríen?

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      La imagen que se toma al fichar a los acusados de un delito suele reflejar seriedad, incredulidad o sorpresa. Eso no ha sucedido con algunos de los acusados con el expresidente en Georgia.[Última hora: Donald Trump fue fichado en Georgia y las autoridades difundieron su foto policial. Puedes leer más aquí, en inglés].La típica foto policial suele ser un asunto sombrío: con mala iluminación y gesto taciturno. Es un retrato permanente de la vergüenza, la letra escarlata del sistema legal.Y, casi por definición, va sin sonrisa.Pero entre las fotografías que han surgido de la oficina del sheriff del condado de Fulton en Atlanta, donde Donald Trump y otras 18 personas han sido acusadas de conspirar para revertir las elecciones de 2020, hay varias que son peculiarmente alegres.Jenna Ellis, exabogada de Trump, luce una amplia sonrisa, al igual que David Shafer, expresidente del Partido Republicano de Georgia. Scott Hall, operador político de Trump, no logra reprimir una sonrisita burlona. Sidney Powell, acusada de esparcir teorías de la conspiración desacreditadas sobre las elecciones, deja ver un brillo en los ojos.Sidney Powell, acusada de difundir teorías conspirativas desacreditadas sobre las elecciones, es retratada con un gesto que oscila entre una sonrisa y un ceño fruncido.Oficina del sheriff del condado de Fulton vía Associated Press¿Y qué expresan sin lugar a dudas sus expresiones faciales? Desafío.El semblante que han puesto para la cámara del sistema de justicia penal, y para el lente de la historia, recuerda los otros papeles de reparto que desempeñan en lo que parece ser una extraordinaria producción del teatro político: uno que concuerda con la afirmación muy repetida por Trump de que la fiscalía es una farsa y una burla.En la fotografía de Ellis, tomada el miércoles —tan alegre que podría ser una foto de perfil, a no ser por el logotipo de la oficina del sheriff detrás de su hombro— parece a punto de estallar en risas por el lugar donde se encuentra.La política moderna en tiempos de redes sociales, como casi todo, es una batalla por crear, controlar y definir imágenes. Y la foto policial, inventada en Bélgica en la década de 1840 como una forma útil de identificación, es un nuevo frente en ese combate.La mayoría de los otros acusados fichados hasta el momento de delitos de conspiración para revertir los resultados de las elecciones de 2020 dejaban ver su serio dilema. Tal vez ninguno más que Rudolph Giuliani, quien apretó los labios, miró con frialdad al frente y frunció el ceño luego de comparecer ante las autoridades el miércoles en Atlanta.Ellis intentó adueñarse de un proceso que suele verse como humillante o intimidante; ella ha presentado su acusación como una persecución política injusta que debe superarse con fe y optimismo.Publicó su fotografía policial en internet con una cita de los Salmos: “¡Alégrense, ustedes los justos; regocíjense en el Señor!”.Cuando se le pidieron comentarios, Ellis comparó su situación con la de un antiguo cliente, un ministro que desafió una orden de cerrar su iglesia en la pandemia.“Quienes se burlan de mí, de mi excliente y mi Dios, quieren ver que me quiebro y no tendrán esa satisfacción”, dijo. “Sonreí porque estoy decidida a enfrentar este proceso con valentía y actuando según la fe. No pueden robarse mi alegría”.Powell y los abogados que representan a Shafer y Hall no respondieron de inmediato a pedidos de comentario.Haber sido retratado en las instalaciones del condado de Fulton podría ser incluso un símbolo de estatus entre los seguidores de Trump más incondicionales: Amy Kremer, quien ayudo a organizar el mitin previo al motín del 6 de enero de 2021 en el Capitolio, publicó una foto manipulada en la que aparece, sin sonreír, frente al logotipo del sheriff del condado de Fulton. No se le ha acusado en Georgia.Se supone que el retrato policial sea un ecualizador, que tanto los poderosos como los desposeídos sean blanco del mismo lente objetivo. Y muchos enemigos de Trump han criticado al Servicio de Alguaciles de EE. UU. por no tomar la foto de la ficha policial (como harían con otros acusados) cuando el expresidente fue fichado por cargos federales en Miami y Washington.Esta vez será distinto.Por regla general, los políticos suelen asumir su fichaje en la comisaría como eventos políticos que al final tendrán un peso en el resultado legal.Cuando a Tom DeLay, líder de la cámara baja, se le acusó de lavado de dinero y conspiración en 2005, se atavió con traje, ajustó su corbata y sonrió de oreja a oreja. Fue una forma astuta de privar a sus oponentes de una imagen que fácilmente podrían usar en anuncios para atacarlo. (Se retiró del Congreso pero su posterior condena fue anulada en apelación).John Edwards, quien fue senador por Carolina del Norte y candidato demócrata a la vicepresidencia en 2004, sonrió con calidez ante la cámara como si estuviera frente a un simpatizante cuando lo ficharon al imputársele delitos de violación de leyes de financiación de campaña en 2011. Como Ellis, quería transmitir su inocencia y la injusticia de los cargos. (Fue absuelto de uno de los cargos y el gobierno retiró los restantes).Servicio de Alguaciles de EE. UU. vía Getty ImagesServicio de Alguaciles de EE. UU. vía Getty ImagesA los políticos les obsesiona proyectar mensajes, es un rasgo dominante de su especie. Tom DeLay, John Edwards y Rick Perry acudieron a que los ficharan como a un evento político que a final de cuentas podría influenciar el veredicto legal.Oficina del sheriff del condado de Travis vía Getty ImagesY en 2014, Rick Perry, entonces gobernador republicano de Texas, ofreció una sonrisa taimada cuando lo ficharon por delitos relacionados con presionar al fiscal de distrito demócrata del condado de Travis para que renunciara. Calificó los cargos de “farsa”, publicó fotos suyas en una heladería poco después y dos años más tarde fue absuelto de todos los cargos.En la mayoría de los casos, sonreír en la foto policial es una muestra de rebeldía.Eso ha sido particularmente cierto si se habla de los delincuentes famosos que, en general, han sido casi tan cuidadosos de su imagen como las estrellas de cine o los políticos. Al Capone sonrió en varios retratos policiales así como en su foto de identificación en Alcatraz. Y en la única foto que se le tomó al narcotraficante Pablo Escobar para una ficha policial, luego de que lo arrestaron por narcotráfico en Colombia, parecía casi jubiloso.Donaldson Collection — Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesPor lo general, los criminales famosos, como Al Capone y Pablo Escobar, han estado muy atentos a su imagen, como las estrellas de cine o los políticos.Archivio GBB vía AlamyTenía un buen motivo. Los cargos fueron retirados rápidamente.Glenn Thrush cubre el departamento de Justicia. Se unió al Times desde 2017, luego de haber trabajado para Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, The New York Daily News, The Birmingham Post-Herald y City Limits. Más de Glenn ThrushMaggie Haberman es corresponsal política sénior y autora de Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Formó parte del equipo que ganó un premio Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores del presidente Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia. Más de Maggie Haberman More

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      Fixing America’s Health Care System

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      More from our inbox:Trump’s Trial Dates and the Odds of ConvictionDoes Barbie Really Need Ken?September Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “How Do We Fix the Scandal That Is American Health Care?,” by Nicholas Kristof, with photographs by September Dawn Bottoms (column, Aug. 20):Nicholas Kristof scratches the surface of the failures of the health care system in this country. I have been in practice for 28 years as a cardiologist and internist and have seen firsthand the miraculous breakthroughs in cardiac care as well as the appalling level of care typical in treatment of chronic diseases, especially among minority populations.Most care in this country is delivered by large for-profit and nonprofit entities (which function largely as for-profit entities but avoid taxes). These systems are incentivized to invest in high-end tertiary care, typically cardiac, orthopedic, neurosurgical and oncologic care, as they have the highest reimbursement.Chronic care for conditions such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are not sexy areas of medicine and for the most part offer low compensation from Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payers.Our health care system needs to incentivize primary care and force nonprofit entities to allocate larger portions of their budgets to primary care or lose their nonprofit status.Daniel ZangerBrooklynTo the Editor:Nicholas Kristof has written a cogent and damning column. One piece of the health care crisis we must also address is physician education and remuneration.New physicians have delayed earning potential in order to attend medical school and have endured at least three years of paltry pay and extremely demanding schedules as medical interns and residents. By the time they are able to practice medicine after at least seven years of post-college training, they are unlikely to set up practice in rural areas with the lowest pay, fewest colleagues for support, professional isolation and limited call coverage. They are also less likely to practice in pediatrics or family medicine than in a medical specialty.Indeed, no one can blame them for wanting to work in a place conducive to comfortably repaying student loans as well as paying for malpractice insurance.Bright, hardworking young people can find myriad other fields of work and skip the stress that is modern U.S. medicine.If we are serious about improving health outcomes and reducing infant mortality, depression and skyrocketing rates of diabetes and other illnesses, then we need to completely revamp physician education.Nurses, doctors and hospital staff are heroes. Let’s treat them as such. Pay for their education, and incentivize work in underserved and high-risk locales.Susan BaloghBostonTo the Editor:Only last month the Department of Health and Human Services found that some of the country’s largest for-profit insurance companies, which together manage Medicaid programs that cover the majority of the 87 million individuals on Medicaid, denied more than one of every four requests for doctor-ordered treatments or medications for patients enrolled in their Medicaid plans. Medicaid serves many who live with the disadvantages that often lead to higher rates of diabetes and other chronic illnesses for which timely and consistent care is essential to better outcomes. Providing the services that doctors prescribe for these patients would go a long way to fixing the scandal described by Mr. Kristof.Ted HermanProvidence, R.I.The writer is a former health insurance executive.Trump’s Trial Dates and the Odds of ConvictionDoug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “This Indictment Does Something Ingenious,” by Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 16): The Georgia indictment might be ingenious, but the fact remains that Donald Trump won Georgia in 2016 and missed by a whisker winning again in 2020. So there is an overwhelming likelihood that some of his base of supporters will be on his jury and will not vote for his conviction no matter the strength of the evidence.Harold J. SmithWhite Plains, N.Y.To the Editor:There are many legitimate factors to take into account in determining when any criminal trial might begin, but one factor not to take into account is the defendant’s job. At the moment, Donald Trump is looking for a job (president) and in essence interviewing to get the job (campaigning).So let’s hope that the one factor that none of the judges consider in setting Mr. Trump’s trial date is his “interviewing schedule.”The judges might consider that at least some of Mr. Trump’s potential “employers” might want to know before hiring him whether or not he is a felon and set to spend many years in prison.Eugene D. CohenPhoenixDoes Barbie Really Need Ken?Iris Schneider/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor: Re “Why Barbie and Ken Need Each Other,” by Ross Douthat (column, nytimes.com, Aug. 9):As a young woman, I agree with Mr. Douthat that “Barbie” contains some real, not-talked-about ambivalence concerning what female empowerment truly means.However, the core failing of “Barbie” is not, as he suggests, its failure to unite Barbie and Ken romantically, but a failure to imagine a world in which people of all genders can successfully lead together. Mr. Douthat’s insinuation that romance and reproduction must be the basis of any kind of productive union between men and women is archaic and troubling.This being said, the assertion of the “Barbie” movie that Ken is “superfluous” is also concerning. It is not, of course, that women have a need for men, but that humanity requires all of its members’ collaboration to achieve its highest potential. And yet, at the end of the movie, when Ken is relegated to a status equal to that of women in the real world (read: oppressed), any hope for a world in which people — or dolls — of all genders can live fulfilled, empowered lives remains elusive.Mary ElliotLenox, Mass.To the Editor:Certainly, there is evidence that married people tend to be happier than the unmarried. But that largely applies to people who are happily married. Unhappily married people are not only less happy than the happily married, but also less happy than those who are divorced, and less healthy than those who are single, divorced or widowed.There are some important factors that suggest Barbie and Ken’s union might not be a happy one. Barbie never expressed any interest in a relationship with Ken or with anyone else. As Barbie was being ushered into a black S.U.V. and taken to the Mattel headquarters, Ken high-tailed it back to Barbieland solo. While there, as Gloria (played by America Ferrera) so clearly summarized, he took Barbie’s house, he brainwashed her friends, and he tried to control the government.No one needs 40 years of General Social Survey data to know that they would be miserable. Stop trying to convince women that the key to their happiness is committing to emotionally damaged men against their self-interest and better judgment.Theresa HastertAnn Arbor, Mich. More

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      Giuliani Plans to Surrender Wednesday in Georgia Election Case

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      Mr. Giuliani served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and advanced false claims that the election was stolen.Rudolph W. Giuliani plans to turn himself in on Wednesday at the Atlanta jail where defendants are being booked in the racketeering case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, Mr. Giuliani’s local lawyer said Wednesday morning.Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump face the most charges among the 19 defendants in the sprawling case. A former mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani served as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 election and played a leading role in advancing false claims that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.Bernard Kerik, who served as New York City’s police commissioner during Mr. Giuliani’s tenure as mayor, planned to accompany him to the jail in Atlanta, two people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s plans said. Mr. Kerik is not a defendant in the case.The former mayor’s bond has not yet been set. His lawyers plan to meet on Wednesday with the office of Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is leading the investigation.The bond for Mr. Trump, who plans to turn himself in on Thursday, has been set at $200,000.“Based on the bonds that have been set, we would expect it to not be any higher than the president’s, but we’re going to negotiate that with the district attorney’s office,” said Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer representing Mr. Giuliani.The case against Mr. Giuliani is a striking chapter in the recent annals of criminal justice. A former federal prosecutor who made a name for himself with racketeering cases, he now faces a racketeering charge himself.“This is a ridiculous application of the racketeering statute,” he said last week after the indictment was issued.Several of the defendants in the case have already made the trip to the Fulton County jail to be fingerprinted and have mug shots taken. They include Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman, the two architects of the plan to use fake electors to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the election to President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.David Shafer, a former head of the Republican Party in Georgia, has also turned himself in, as has Scott Hall, a pro-Trump Atlanta bail bondsman who was involved in a data breach at a rural Georgia elections office.In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump — who is running for office again, leads the Republican presidential primary field and is skipping his party’s first debate on Wednesday night — sounded a defiant note on social media about his upcoming visit to the Atlanta jail, saying he would “proudly be arrested” Thursday afternoon.Mr. Giuliani has struggled financially with mounting legal expenses, many of them related to his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office for another term after the 2020 defeat. After repeated entreaties from people close to Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump plans to host a $100,000-per-person fund-raiser next month at his club in Bedminster, N.J., to aid the former mayor, according to a copy of the invitation.Three of the 19 defendants have begun trying to have the case removed to federal court: Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official; Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff; and Mr. Shafer.Mr. Clark and Mr. Meadows have also filed court papers seeking to block their arrest.Some defendants were granted bond this week after their lawyers met with prosecutors in Atlanta. Mr. Trump’s bond agreement includes stipulations that he not intimidate witnesses or co-defendants, whether in social media posts or otherwise.Shane Goldmacher More