Former US President Trump hit with RICO Violation

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In indicting former President Donald Trump and 18 others for racketeering, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has turned to a favorite legal tool she’s employed in high-profile cases: Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.

The 19 defendants face 41 criminal charges in total, ranging from racketeering and making false statements to soliciting a public officer to violate his or her oath. While not every defendant faces the same charge, they all stand accused of violating Georgia’s RICO Act.

The indictment accuses the defendants of conspiring to participate in a “criminal enterprise” to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. The bulk of the document — 71 out of 97 pages — is devoted to one racketeering count.

The Georgia law is modeled after a federal statute by the same name that was enacted in 1970 to combat organized crime.

In the 1980s, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, then serving as the top federal prosecutor for New York City, used RICO to take down New York Mafia bosses. He’s now a RICO defendant in Georgia.

But in recent decades, RICO statutes, both federal and state, have been applied more broadly to target gangs, corrupt politicians and white-collar criminals.

In 2013, Willis, then a top prosecutor in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, led a high-profile RICO indictment of dozens of Atlanta teachers and school administrators involved in manipulating student test scores.

Last year, Willis filed a sweeping RICO indictment against prominent Atlanta rapper Young Thug and others allegedly associated with a violent gang. She told the Washington Post that the DA’s office under her watch has brought more RICO cases than in the previous ten years.

Georgia’s RICO statute, enacted in 1980, makes it a crime to engage in a “pattern of racketeering activity” as part of an “enterprise.”

An “enterprise” is not limited to an organization and can extend to individuals participating in criminal schemes.