Former President Donald Trump surrendered at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on Aug. 24 following 13 criminal charges related to possible interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Prior to Trump’s surrender, the Fulton County sheriff said Trump will be booked into the jail like any other suspect, including having his mug shot taken.
This didn’t happen during the former president’s previous arraignments in New York and federal court in Washington, D.C., but that didn’t stop people from spreading fake booking photos that were created using artificial intelligence.
More such fabricated photos cropped up online ahead of Trump’s Aug. 24 booking.
“Former president @realdonaldtrump mug shot from Fulton country,” reads one Aug. 23 Instagram post, misspelling “county” and sharing an image of what looks like Trump staring sternly at the camera.
Another image, also shared Aug. 23, appears to show Trump making a face at someone out of the frame.
These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The Fulton County sheriff’s office didn’t immediately respond to PolitiFact’s questions about these images.
But both were shared the day before Trump was expected to turn himself in.
The county has released the booking photos of Trump’s co-defendants, such as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. So, although one of Trump was forthcoming, it hadn’t been released when these photos were posted online.
The background of Giuliani’s photo is like the one in the background of the image of Trump making a face, but a reverse-image search shows that this particular image of Trump has been online since at least May 2018, long before his fourth indictment.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
Controversy is one of the things that will always pursue Donald Trump.