Bolton says Trump looked like ‘thug’ in booking picture

John Bolton, a former national security adviser to former President Trump, went after Trump’s “carefully staged” booking photo released Thursday after he surrendered in a Georgia prosecution on election interference charges.

“He could have smiled, he could have looked benign, instead he looks like a thug,” Bolton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday.

Trump surrendered to Atlanta authorities Thursday, a procedural step in the sprawling racketeering case against him that alleges he headed a scheme to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

The former president quickly turned to fundraising off of the mug shot, his first in four criminal cases — and the first of a former U.S. president. Bolton argued the indictment could actually help Trump.

“The evidence is that the indictments have proven the law of diminishing marginal utility. If anything, they’re not undercutting his support, they’re building it up,” he said.

All eyes are now on one of the case’s defendants, former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who is currently scheduled to start a trial Oct. 23 after demanding his date be moved up.

Bolton argued Chesebro’s case will have an “unbelievable political effect.”

“If Chesebro goes ahead and is acquitted, it vindicates Trump’s narrative,” he said. “If he’s convicted, it obviously cuts in the other direction and it could happen in two months.”

Several of the case’s defendants have moved for the trial to go to federal court instead of Georgia state court. Trump’s attorneys are expected to make the same demand next week.

Bolton argued against the strategy, saying it only served to delay the trial closer or even beyond the 2024 election because it may trigger appeals all the way to the Supreme Court.

“Trump’s ultimate strategy is always to delay, and by moving to remove it, that throws another wrinkle into [the case],” he said.

While Bolton said he believes the case should stay in Georgia, he said it was “highly likely” that it will get moved because Trump was president at the time of the alleged crimes.