Atlanta, Georgia - Donald Trump was formally arrested Thursday on racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia, as the former president battles his fourth criminal indictment while seeking reelection to the White House.

The booking of the billionaire real estate tycoon in his fourth and final indictment sets up a year of unprecedented courtroom drama as he tries to balance appearing in the dock with hitting the campaign trail.

The arrest comes just hours after Trump spurned a televised primary debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, featuring eight of his rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – all of whom lag well behind him in the polls.

He managed to steal the spotlight, though, as the focus of questions, with all but two of the candidates saying they would support Trump as the party's nominee even if he were convicted in any of the cases.

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During a rambling pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson – which aired on X at the same time as the debate – Trump dismissed the four criminal indictments filed against him as "nonsense" and "bulls**t." He said the Justice Department had been "weaponized" under Democratic President Joe Biden to hamstring his White House bid.

On Thursday, Trump was booked at Atlanta's Fulton County Jail, which was ringed by a tight security perimeter as hordes of journalists and dozens of the Republican's supporters flocked to the facility.

In posts on his Truth Social platform shortly before leaving his New Jersey golf club for the flight to Atlanta, Trump said he was being arrested for "having the audacity to challenge a RIGGED & STOLLEN (sic) ELECTION."

Trump was able to dodge the humiliation of having a mugshot taken during his previous arrests this year: in New York on charges of paying hush money to a porn star, in Florida for mishandling top secret government documents, and in Washington on charges of conspiring to upend his 2020 election loss.

But Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said standard procedure in Georgia is for a defendant to have a mugshot taken before they are released on bond – already set at $200,000 in Trump's case.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as Trump's personal lawyer when he was in the White House and vigorously pushed the false claims that Trump had won the 2020 election, was booked in the case on Wednesday.

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Also facing charges in Georgia are Mark Meadows, Trump's White House chief of staff, and John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who is accused of drawing up a scheme to submit a false slate of Trump electors to Congress from Georgia instead of the legitimate Biden ones.

Trump is the first US president in history to face criminal charges. The four trials will come during the Republican primary season, which begins in January, and at the height of the campaign for the November 2024 presidential vote.

Special counsel Jack Smith has proposed a January 2024 start date for Trump's trial in Washington on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, a campaign of lies that culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Trump's attorneys have countered with an April 2026 start date – well after the 2024 election. After proposing a start date of March 4, 2024, Georgia prosecutors are now calling for the trial to begin on October 23, 2023.

The Florida case, in which Trump is accused of taking secret government documents as he left the White House and refusing to return them, is scheduled to begin in May.