‘Eustace Marvello’ Mugshot Tweet

On August 25 2023, a mugshot showing an interestingly coiffed man going by the name of “Eustace Marvello,” who was purportedly involved in a scheme to interfere with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, began circulating on Twitter:

Background and Context

Alongside the mugshot, text of the tweet indicated that somebody named “Eustace Marvello” surrendered in Fulton County, Georgia, for having attempted to tamper with voting machines “at the behest of Rudy Giuliani”:

Eustace Marvello, the stage magician who attempted to tamper with Fulton County voting machines at the behest of Rudy Giuliani, has surrendered to the authorities.

Broadly, the tweet was part of broader discourse pertaining to a case against disgraced former United States President Donald Trump and his alleged co-conspirators, which was filed in Fulton County, Georgia on August 14 2023, as Reuters.com reported at the time:

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit with a sweeping fourth set of criminal charges on Monday [August 14 2023] when a Georgia grand jury issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Among the other defendants were Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

As reported, no fewer than 19 individuals connected to the investigation were formally charged in connection with alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Consequently, a number of mugshots related to the arrests appeared and circulated online as the indicted defendants individually surrendered.

On August 25 2023, Vox.com published an article about the mugshots, “A visual guide to the 19 defendants in the Trump Georgia case.” That reporting featured all nineteen mugshots, and the story alluded to an atypical and confusing number of defendants:

The Georgia charges come from the largest of the four serious criminal cases Trump faces; one of several unique things about Trump’s Georgia indictment is the number of defendants who are named in it. While the US government’s January 6 [2021] case against Trump largely focuses on the former president, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is pursuing a case not only against Trump, but 18 additional defendants who were attorneys, staffers, and local officials allegedly working with the former president.

Willis charged such a large group because she argues that the Trump campaign was at the center of a criminal enterprise and that many of the individuals named in the case helped assist in the organization’s attempt to overturn the Georgia 2020 election results.

Establishing that Trump and his allies were part of an enterprise — a person, group, or business engaged in legal or illegal behavior — is key to Willis’s assertion that the defendants violated Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. To do so, prosecutors will need to convince a jury that all the defendants are guilty of racketeering, or organizing an enterprise to systematically plan and commit crimes, and using coercion, manipulation, and intimidation as needed to advance their goals.

The list of people Willis says were part of that enterprise is a lot to keep track of, and includes high-profile familiar faces — such as former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — as well as less-well-known individuals like false electors David Shafer and Shawn Still.

None of the images included matched the “Eustace Marvello” tweet.

The ‘Eustace Marvello Mugshot’

Clearly, none of the indicted individuals were named “Eustace Marvello.” A reverse image search quickly and clearly indicated the image was unconnected to the August 2023 Fulton County, Georgia mugshots.

A version of the image was shared to Reddit’s r/justfuckmyshitup — a subreddit for images of poorly executed haircuts — on January 10 2021:

We were unable to locate any older versions of the image, but it was obviously taken well before charges in Georgia were filed against Donald Trump or any of his alleged co-conspirators.

Summary

On August 25 2023, a purported mugshot of “Eustace Marvello” circulated on Twitter, described as one of the nineteen individuals charged in connection with attempting to overturn the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. The image and tweet appeared to be humorous in nature — but it appeared at a time when an unusually large number of similar mugshots circulated, which caused some confusion among readers. The image was shared to Reddit in January 2021; it was unrelated to the charges filed in Georgia in August 2023.