Donald Trump Becomes Prisoner Number P01135809

But stays at large.

Former US President Donald Trump arrived at a jail in the capital in Georgia's state capital, Atlanta, on Thursday and formally surrendered as a defendant in a criminal case. He was immediately released because earlier in the week the judge decided to keep him free pending trial on $200,000 bail, the BBC reported.

The Fulton County prosecutor in Atlanta accuses Trump of trying to revise the results of the 2020 presidential election. According to the official charge, he demanded this from local Republican politicians holding official elected posts in government. The former president himself denies the allegations.

At the Fulton County jail, Trump, who arrived from the airport in a large motorcade, stayed only about 20 minutes. He was registered as prisoner number P01135809, fingerprinted and photographed.

Donald Trump has become the first former and sitting president of the United States to be criminally charged, and the photo released on Thursday is the first ever official prison photo of a US president. This is the fourth criminal case against Trump, but in the previous three cases he was not photographed, and no photo was ever published.

A registration card for defendant Donald Trump also appeared on the prison's website: male, white, 6ft 3in (190cm) tall, 215lbs (97kg), straw-coloured hair, blue eyes.

From the prison, Trump travelled back to the airport, from where he flew to New Jersey, where he lives on the territory of one of his golf clubs.

Before departing, he addressed reporters briefly at the airport and said he had every right to question the election results.

"This election was rigged, it was a stolen election," Trump repeated his claims, the falsity of which has been repeatedly proven and recognised both by the courts in the US and even by Trump's fellow Republican Party members.

BBC correspondents in the US remind us that Trump, according to the accusation in Georgia, did not simply "question" the election results and did not challenge them in court, to which, of course, he has every right, but tried to pressure local officials, Republicans, in phone conversations to "find those 11780 votes" that he lacked in Georgia to defeat Joe Biden.

The former president has consistently called all of the accusations a "witch hunt" and the persecution of a political opponent by Democratic Party members and supporters.

Before flying to Georgia, he once again accused Fulton County Prosecutor Fannie Willis, who is prosecuting the case against him. Willis represents the Democratic Party (district attorney in the US is an elected political office). In posts on his own social media network of Truth, Trump claimed Willis was busy hunting him instead of fighting the unprecedented crime wave sweeping Atlanta.

As the BBC notes, the latter claim is not true: Atlanta is no different from any major US city in terms of crime rates.

Trump, 77, intends to run again in next year's presidential election and is leading among the contenders for the Republican Party nomination.

19 Accomplices

Along with Trump, 18 other people are charged in the case, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

All of them have to register at the Fulton County jail by noon Friday, and half of them have already done so, while one Trump associate, Black Voices for Trump leader Harrison Floyd, has even been kept in pre-trial detention because he has not yet negotiated bail.

Donald Trump has been released pending trial on bail on the condition that he will not attempt to threaten witnesses and associates, including via social media, and will only have contact with other defendants through lawyers.