A 'Criminal organization': 7 takeways from Trump's Georgia indictment - USA Trending Blog
A 'Criminal organization': 7 takeways from Trump's Georgia indictment - USA Trending Blog
Former President Donald Trump and a network of his allies are accused of operating a criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 election in a sweeping 41-count indictment brought by a Georgia grand jury.
The indictment late Monday led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis the fourth to target Trump spanning federal and state courts takes aim not just at the president but 18 co-defendants.
Trump decried the charges as "another witch hunt" on his social media platform Truth Social.
But the case poses an especially serious threat because, unlike Trump's two federal indictments, a conviction in Georgia state court could not be subject to a future presidential pardon.
Here are seven takeaways from Trump's latest charges.
Trump accused of operating 'criminal organization' under RICO
The key distinction of the Georgia indictment is that Willis charged Trump under the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a law that is historically used to take down drug operations and gangs.
It allows a prosecutor's to combine multiple suspected crimes into one charge: racketeering.
Georgia prosecutors argue Trump and his allies constituted a "criminal organization" whose members engaged in a wide range of criminal activity including providing false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery and computer theft with the goal of overturning the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia and other states won by Joe Biden.
Federal prosecutors have used RICO to take down Mob bosses and, more recently, wealthy parents who paid a ringleader to fake their children's credentials in the "Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal.
But Georgia's RICO statute is much broader. State prosecutors can cite alleged crimes in other states and the enterprise doesn't have to be successful to bring charges. The only bar to bring RICO charges is an enterprise that commits "two or more" criminal acts to carry out the conspiracy.
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