Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani — once known fondly around the world as “America’s mayor” — was forced to pose for a mugshot Wednesday in the case accusing him of trying to unlawfully overturn the result of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
The grim photo of the unsmiling Giuliani was released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s office shortly before 5 p.m.
“They’re going to degrade themselves by doing a mugshot of me, like people won’t recognize me,” the one-time lawyer for former President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday morning as he left his Upper East Side apartment to surrender to officials in Atlanta.
Giuliani, 79, was indicted last week in the Peach State alongside Trump, 77, and 17 others — including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The former mayor turned himself in Wednesday at the Fulton County jail and was released on $150,000 bond.
In a humiliating reversal, the former Manhattan federal prosecutor was charged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations (RICO) law — similar to the federal statute whose use Giuliani pioneered to take down the mob in the Big Apple.
“You find a prosecutor who has a better record than mine in the last 100 years. Bet you don’t. Or mayor,” he said Wednesday morning.
Giuliani had his New York law license suspended over his “demonstrably false and misleading statements” after the 2020 election.
Trump plans to surrender at the same jail Thursday, with his lawyers agreeing to post $200,000 bond.
Willis has given all of the defendants until Friday to turn themselves in and is asking for the case to go to trial on March 4.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has said it plans to release mugshots every day until all of the defendants surrender.
Trump faces three other indictments: A New York case accusing him of falsifying business records, a Florida federal case accusing him of hoarding troves of confidential national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and a DC case over his attempts to remain in power after his 2020 election loss. Trump has maintained his innocence in all of the cases and has said that they are politically motivated.
“I am fighting for justice,” Giuliani said Wednesday. “I have been from the first moment I represented Donald Trump, and as a man who has now been proven innocent several times.”