Donald Trump turned his grimly defiant mugshot into part of his personal brand - rallying Republican voters behind him and raising millions of dollars to fund his presidential campaign, while driving the left up a wall.
Now, legal pundits are pushing a new controversy, accusing Trump of illegally fundraising off the mugshot.
Over at MSNBC, leftist lawyer Dean Obeidallah pumped the claim that Fulton County owns the copyright and has the ability to sue Trump for the profits.
Obeidallah cited an entry in the University of Georgia School of Law’s Journal of Intellectual Property Law, which states that mugshots belong to the "author," meaning law enforcement.
"This could mean that theoretically, the millions he is making off that photo may rightfully belong to the Fulton County sheriff," Obeidallah wrote.
Betsy Rosenblatt, an intellectual property expert at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said Fulton County could pursue a lawsuit but it's doubtful they will go through the trouble.
She cited the photo's significance as a historic work - which makes it the property of the world in a sense.
“Whether the Fulton County Sheriff's Department would decide to enforce its copyright is entirely up to them,” Rosenblatt said.
"But it's also reasonable to think that the Fulton County Sheriff's Office might think, you know, this is a public document, it belongs to the world in a way, [the] copyright belongs to us. But the news about it belongs to the world. And we're not going to undertake the expense and trouble," she added.
Of course, everything about the Trump indictments is unprecedented, so there are no safe and neat "legal" answers for dealing with this historic situation, no matter how many times liberals chant "no one is above the law."
Given the blatantly political nature of the prosecutions themselves, the claim that Trump broke the law by selling a mugshot is - well, petty to say the least.
Just in case jailing Trump does not work, anti-Trump lawfare "experts" are also pushing a fringe theory to remove him from the ballot altogether - to protect "democracy" of course.
The theory revolves around the notion that Trump is disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment because he is an "insurrectionist."
Notably, Trump has not been accused of insurrection in any of the four cases against him, including the two cases in Georgia and Washington that deal with the 2020 election.
The prosecutions are costing Trump millions in legal fees, putting his campaign under enormous financial strain.
