Is an image of Donald Trump in a black pin-stripe suit the real mug shot taken after he was surrendered and was arrested in Atlanta on August 24, 2023? No, that's not true: The image is fake and according to an AI detection website is 99 percent likely to have been generated by artificial intelligence. Trump's real mug shot was released by the Fulton County Jail on August 24, 2023 and he is wearing a blue suit, white shirt and a solid red tie.
The claim was one of several fake Trump mugshots circulating on the day Trump surrendered in Atlanta. This one appeared as an Instagram post (archived here) on August 24, 2023. It opened:
Damn Donnie 🤣😂
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Aug 25 1:41:33 2023 UTC)
The image posted on Instagram shows Trump wearing a black suit with white pin-stripes, a white shirt and a black tie. Next to him on one side of the photo is a nonsensical height chart and the other side has a Fulton County Sheriff's Office badge with a black background on the badge. This is not his real mug shot from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, which was released to the public after Trump was arrested on Thursday, August 24, 2023.
Trump's real mug shot obtained by Lead Stories directly from the sheriff's office shows just below his shoulders, does not have a height chart and the sheriff's logo, which has no black background, is not as clearly in focus. Here is the real mug shot:
(Source: Fulton County Sheriff's office on Fri Aug 25 1:42:29 2023 UTC)
The Fulton County Jail website records show that Trump, with booking number 2313827, is a white male, 6' 3" in height, 215 pounds in weight, with blond or strawberry hair and blue eyes. Here is a screenshot of the records search for Donald John Trump:
(Source: Fulton County Jail website on Fri Aug 25 1:44:16 2023 UTC)
A search on AI generation-checking website Hive assessed the image posted on Instagram as "99.9% likely to be AI generated" as this screenshot shows:
(Source: HIVE website on Fri Aug 25 1:11:34 2023 UTC)
Another false version of the mug shot was posted on social media showing Trump in a blue suit, white shirt, red, white and blue tie with an American flag on his lapel. That is also fake. A Google lens search found that image with the background intact on AMNY.com on November 21, 2020. Here is a montage that includes the other fake Trump mug shot that circulated on August 24, 2023 on social media.
Trump included the real mug shot in a post on his X account Thursday night. That tweet is below:
Other Lead Stories fact checks regarding Donald Trump can be found here.
