ABC of the anti-organized crime norm used in the new case against Trump

On the night of Wednesday, August 14, former President Donald Trump received his fourth indictment. This time it was the Georgia grand jury that officially accused the former president of trying to reverse his defeat in that state in the 2020 presidential election.

Specifically, the 98-page document indicates that Trump is the head of a “criminal enterprise” that sought to annul the results of the elections in which Democrat Joe Biden was elected president.

The indictment was filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and also includes 18 other people and involves a total of 41 counts: one of them is extortion that all defendants face.

The text details numerous criminal actions that these 19 people would have committed after the elections and also subsequent attempts to cover up said actions.

What does the RICO Act determine?

This is a charge that violates the so-called RICO Law, or the Corrupt and Influenced by Extortion Organizations Act, a regulation that was approved at the federal level in 1970 and whose main objective was to fight against the American mafia and criminal criminal organizations. organized.

The regulations have a particularity and that is that it allows people to be prosecuted for belonging to criminal organizations, even if they have only ordered crimes, but have not executed them. Also, if in a period of ten years, they have only committed two of the total of 35 crimes contemplated.

But states across the country have enacted similar laws with a few twists, so it expands to many other types of “organized criminal activity.”

The state of Georgia passed its own version of the law in 1980. The rule makes it a crime to join, acquire, or maintain control of an “enterprise” through a “pattern of racketeering activity” or to conspire to do so.

It should be noted that the regulations of the state of Georgia do not require that criminal enterprises have a long duration and include 50 underlying crimes that fall within the extortion modality.

Individuals found guilty of violating Georgia’s RICO law face between five and 20 years in prison.

According to prosecutor Willis, the 19 defendants were part of “an organized crime enterprise to annul the result of the presidential elections in Georgia.” The defendants would have tried to influence witnesses, would have made false statements, presented false documents, leaked information and they would have even supplanted officials.

The regulations do not require prosecutors to prove that the defendants directly participated in criminal activity, only that they were part of an organization that did so. This means that the prosecution is not required to prove that Trump personally violated that law, it is enough to show that the facts were coordinated in conjunction with those who carried them out.

In other words, prosecutors will have to prove that the former president and his co-defendants, including his former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, acted for a common criminal purpose.

What does this new imputation bring for Donald Trump?

The indictment in Georgia leaves the former president and candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2024 elections with 91 charges in four separate proceedings against him.

And the case in Georgia is the second related to his efforts to nullify the 2020 election. It is also the second case against him to be heard in federal court.

The document presented states that several of the acts that were allegedly part of an “organized crime conspiracy” involved other states. Willis indicated that, according to the grand jury, the acts committed outside the state are part of the plot to annul the results in Georgia.

The indictment detailed a total of 161 alleged acts carried out in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy to reverse Trump’s electoral defeat. Several of those episodes would have taken place in the states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.

A key to the current process is that the state of Georgia has extensive regulations that prohibit making false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements in any matter involving the jurisdiction of a state government department or agency, and the indictment contains the phrase “false statement “more than a hundred times.

Specifically, Trump and Giuliani, among others, are accused of declaring false information about voter fraud in public and in legal documents such as in hearings in that state.

Similarly, the crime of requesting violation of the public oath by a public official is highlighted.

Specifically, the text refers to the call that Trump made on January 2, 2021 to the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to help him “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat.

“Look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump reportedly told Raffensperger during the communication.

Could Trump be president if convicted?

Within the most radical wing of the Republicans, Donald Trump has broad support that seems unwavering despite the trials against him. Prior to this accusation, a survey by ‘The Washington Post’ revealed that the former president had a voting intention of more than 50% to win the Republican nomination.

One of the questions that arises is whether an eventual conviction could prevent the tycoon from winning the Republican nomination and reaching the White House.

Several experts indicate that there are insufficient legal grounds for this. However, there is consensus that neither the accusations against him, nor a conviction, could prevent Trump from being elected, even as president.

The reason is that the Constitution only has three requirements for the country’s main office: being born in the United States, having resided in the country for at least 14 years, and being 35 years of age or older.

With Reuters, AP and local media