‘The Only Satisfaction May Be That The System Is Working’
Donald Trump indicted late Monday in Georgia election case
With Donald Trump indicted for a fourth time in Georgia late Monday, a variety of political and legal analysts have begun putting into perspective the growing legal peril that the former president is facing, as well as what it means for the nation.
Fani Willis, district attorney in Fulton County Ga., announced a grand jury's indictment of Trump and nearly 20 other named defendants shortly before midnight late Monday.
The charges in the Georgia case bring to 91 the total number of criminal charges he’s facing across four separate cases as he campaigns to return to the White House.
“This is a terrible moment for our country to have a former president accused of these terribly important crimes. The only satisfaction may be that the system is working,” said Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Trump in 2016. “All of the efforts by Donald Trump, allies and enablers to try to silence the truth and try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light. Justice is being pursued.”
The Georgia case alleges Trump was central to a sprawling criminal conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 result in favor of Joe Biden, using Georgia's RICO law.
“Well, RICO is a fancy way of saying, ‘Look, a whole bunch of people got together, two or more really got together and coordinated a conspiracy.’ It’s conspiracy on steroids, as my friend Norm Eisen likes to say,” said former prosecutor Laura Coates, referring to the top ethics attorney in the White House in the Obama administration. “It’s a way of participating in crimes, two or more in Georgia, as part of an overall plan. The overall connection, really, is that you all engage in criminal behavior. You need not have direct connection with one another, as long as you are part of an overall conspiracy or actual enterprise.
“Think about the common mafia case, right, where you have got one person who is kind of a ringleader, a puppeteer as you will. Everyone attached to that string involved in the entire theater really is going to be at issue here,” Coates added. “The reason this is so important here is that normally a prosecutor only has the jurisdiction in their own specific area. They have to be near-sighted for justice to prevail. RICO allows you to be broader, because whatever you have engaged in, in criminal behavior, that really had an impact in my jurisdiction, whether it happened out of state, whether it was different counties, whether it was something in a different, you know, region of the country, it all can count towards my RICO case around me.”
Author and political commentator Van Jones marveled at the sheer size of the Georgia case Willis brought, and the difference between it and the separate federal charges special counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump for his role in overturning the 2020 election.
“Well, she didn’t throw the book at him, she threw the library. I think the difference between her approach and Jack Smith’s approach is really night and day,” Jones said. “Jack Smith said, ‘There is a bunch of bad actors here, I’m going after one person, Donald Trump. I’m going to be very, very narrow.’ She went after 18 other people, so very different approach.”
Trump's White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows is treated differently between the federal and the Georgia cases.
“Also, Jack Smith says hands off Mark Meadows, which signals that Mark Meadows — despite being corrupt and horrible — is cooperating. [Willis] puts her hands on Mark Meadows in this. So you have got a very different player that just stepped on the field with a very different playbook and a very different sense of what justice looks like,” Jones said. “I think the people that I am hearing from are very, very proud because this RICO stuff, conspiracy stuff, you’ve got kids in neighborhoods across this country that have gone to jail on RICO charges, conspiracy charges. You’ve got kids in jails who were standing outside of the convenience store, their friend went inside and did something stupid, and now everybody they know is in jail.
“So we are very familiar with the book, the library, half of Amazon.com, being thrown at us when somebody does something wrong, and so this is actually what justice looks like,” he added. “If you say you don’t want a two-tiered justice system, this is what not having a two-tiered justice system looks like. You have an aggressive prosecutor, she is going after you, everybody you know, and she is not messing around. So, this is a very different prosecutor and a very different playbook than you saw with Jack Smith.”
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