Lawyer Points Out Big Problem with Georgia Sheriff Wanting Trump’s Mugshot

Persecution cannot persist without petty tyrants.

Appearing on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday, Alina Habba, attorney for former President Donald Trump, noted that officials in Georgia seem a bit too gleeful over Trump latest sham indictment, handed up Monday by a grand jury in Fulton County.

In a press conference earlier this month, for instance, the county’s Democratic sheriff, Pat Labat, sounded positively giddy and even flippant when discussing security and procedure in the event of a Trump indictment — including the prospect of a mugshot for the former president.

“Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you,” Labat said, according to WSB-TV.

Habba observed that county officials appear to be enjoying their power too much.

“Obviously you see that there’s, you know, a bit of an ego trip happening in Georgia where they’re saying that they’re gonna force him to have a mugshot,” Habba told “Fox and Friends.”

Indeed, the standard legal justification for taking a defendant’s photograph does not apply to Trump.

“The purpose of a mugshot is when you don’t recognize someone, [and] you think there’s a flight risk,” Habba said. “This man is the most famous person in the world, the leading candidate right now,” she added.

Minor officials such as Labat and Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney responsible for the indictment, have enabled some of history’s most grotesque tyrannies.

There is no risk of hyperbole here. In cases of obvious political persecution, we have no choice but to remind ourselves of how those hideous regimes operated.

Dictators have nearly always obeyed the forms of law.

For instance, they have erected phony courts presided over by sycophants eager to collaborate. The Spanish Inquisition leaps to mind. So does Nazi Germany’s “People’s Court.”

In such notorious tribunals, one might easily imagine judges and prosecutors cracking jokes over the dark proceedings.

But surely this goes too far! The Spanish Inquisition? Nazi Germany?

It does not. The purpose of those infamous courts was to root out heretics and punish enemies of the state.

When a former president faces indictment for questioning the results of an election riddled with obvious problems — all of Georgia’s charges against Trump stem from the 2020 presidential election — can we perceive any other purpose but these?

A mugshot, carried out by eager collaborators, amounts to little more than persecution theater.

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Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.