Vultures would leave more on the carcass than these people.
It’s not enough that they indicted the former president for questioning the results of a hard-fought election, now legal scholars are saying that former President Donald Trump didn’t have the legal right to profit off his own mug shot because, according to U.S. copyright law, the law enforcement agency that takes a mug shot is the legal owner of it, according to the New York Post.
Trump’s campaign reported an impressive fundraising total of over $9.4 million since the release of his mug shot to the public.
All of these funds are designated for Trump’s campaign and not for covering his legal expenses.
According to Fox News, this included $864,000 from the sale of 24,000 coffee mugs, nearly $2 million from 36,000 T-shirt sales, and an additional $352,000 from 8,600 poster sales featuring the iconic photograph.
Colin Rugg, co-owner of the conservative news site Trending Politics, posted, “Imagine indicting Donald Trump three times, hyping the fourth indictment up to be the best one yet, finally getting to be able to get a mugshot of the former president, releasing the mugshot… …and then Trump throws the mugshot in a fundraising email, comes back to X and steals the whole show from you. Legendary energy shift.”
Imagine indicting Donald Trump three times, hyping the fourth indictment up to be the best one yet, finally getting to be able to get a mugshot of the former president, releasing the mugshot…
…and then Trump throws the mugshot in a fundraising email, comes back to X and steals… pic.twitter.com/OLorOrG8UT
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 25, 2023
And it was.
Trump shifted the narrative, turning himself from victim to persecuted yet never defeated hero in the eyes of his followers.
He turned the mugshot that the Democrats were gloating about into a rallying cry — a symbol of defiance much like the embroidered kerchief of William Wallace in the movie “Braveheart,” with the message: “Never Surrender.”
Trump :Never Surrender?! pic.twitter.com/xrQtnhIXvj
— ?Iranian American ?? (@IranLionness) September 6, 2023
So, of course, they would find a way to keep him from keeping it.
“They are SO MAD this backfired on them,” one X user said.
They are SO MAD this backfired on them. https://t.co/3Y1GyaoD4g
— James Lindsay, lawful but awful (@ConceptualJames) September 5, 2023
Ultimately, the decision regarding whether to take legal action against the Trump campaign and any other parties that have profited from the mug shot lies with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office. It is within their jurisdiction to determine whether they will pursue legal remedies in this matter.
They could decide not to go through the trouble of fighting a copyright lawsuit.
On the other hand, they could choose to assert that the proceeds from the photo belong to them, which would be going another level down into Hades.
To humiliate the president of the United States on the national stage by taking his mugshot and then to profit off that mugshot would demonstrate, once again, how “unbiased” this prosecution is.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
