Principals

Why the Georgia RICO case could be dangerous for Trump — and tricky for prosecutors

THE NEWS

Thanks to Donald Trump’s latest criminal case, Americans are about to get a crash course on Georgia’s RICO law.

The former president and his 18 co-defendants now face charges under the state’s longstanding anti-racketeering statute, along with a host of other potential felonies, over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, thanks to the sweeping indictment a Fulton County grand jury handed down late Monday night.

First enacted in 1980 in order to help crack down on gangs and organized crime, Georgia’s RICO statute could pose a special danger for Trump. Legal experts say that charges under it are in some ways easier to prove than an ordinary conspiracy case, and could help prosecutors flip his associates. Convictions also carry a prison sentence of between five and 20 years. Since it’s a state crime, Trump would be ineligible for a federal pardon. The governor couldn’t pardon him either, since Georgia only gives that power to a five-member board.

“He could be looking at some serious prison time,” Danny Porter, the former district attorney in nearby Gwinnett County, told Semafor.

THE DANGER FOR TRUMP

A RICO charge allows prosecutors to sweep up anyone who participated in a “criminal enterprise” by committing at least two underlying crimes. Georgia’s is particularly wide reaching: It covers a broader array of conduct than the federal statute it was modeled on, and can include actions taken out of state.

Unlike conspiracy charges, prosecutors bringing a RICO case don’t have to show that the defendants explicitly agreed to commit each crime together — a feature that makes it easier to convict crime bosses for actions taken by their underlings.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — who has made creative racketeering cases one of her trademarks in office — made this point memorably during one of the most famous criminal cases in Atlanta history, when she used RICO to prosecute a group of public school teachers and administrators accused of scheming to inflate their students’ test scores. “You don’t, under RICO, have to have a formal, sit-down dinner meeting where you eat spaghetti. But what you do have to do is all be doing the same thing for the same purpose,” Willis said during the trial.

In the Trump indictment, Willis “is painting this picture of people winking and nodding and working toward this end goal of overthrowing the election, but without some kind of expressed agreement,” Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis told The Conversation. “The Georgia RICO law allows her to rope in a lot of people who allegedly were involved with this kind of approach.”

The more co-conspirators who face legal peril, the more chances prosecutors have to find ones willing to testify.

THE DANGER FOR PROSECUTORS

Racketeering cases are also a deeply complex undertaking for prosecutors. “The hardest thing about trying them is breaking them down into digestible parts for a jury to understand,” Porter told Semafor. They can be slow moving.

“If you examine a witness, every defense attorney has the right to cross-examine that witness, so you could have a situation where you have a prosecutor call a witness, they ask their questions, and then 12 defense attorneys get to cross examine them,” Porter said. In the Trump case, there are 19 defendants — and during her press conference following the indictment, Willis insisted she intended to try them together.

To get a sense of how complex this case will likely become, look no further than another RICO case currently playing out in Fulton’s court. In May 2022, Willis used the statute to indict 28 people accused of being part of the Young Slime Life gang, including rappers Young Thug and Gunna. Over six months after the trial started, more than 2,000 potential jurors have been summoned to court, but a jury still hasn’t been selected, in part because of how long the trial is set to last.

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Fani Willis is getting some serious help from Georgia attorney John Floyd, a nationally recognized expert on anti-racketeering laws who literally wrote the book on state RICO statutes.

A longtime fixture at the Atlanta-based firm Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, Floyd began lending his racketeering expertise to state prosecutors as a special assistant attorney general in the late 1990s, when he helped convict former Medical College of Georgia researchers for steering millions of dollars meant for the school to their own bank accounts. He joined Willis’ team in 2021, but this is not the first time they’ve worked alongside one another on a case: They successfully prosecuted 11 of 12 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes in connection with a cheating scandal at Atlanta’s public schools, obtaining convictions in 2015.

— Morgan Chalfant

☞ White House: The Biden administration is throwing the Inflation Reduction Act its first birthday bash in the East Room on Wednesday. A White House official tells Semafor that the administration has extended invitations to each member of Congress who voted to pass the sweeping climate and prescription drug bill, as well as administration officials; state and local politicians; representatives from labor, climate, business, and philanthropic organizations; and people who are currently benefiting from the law.

☞ Senate: As a result of GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military promotions, the Pentagon for the first time in its history has three of its services operating without Senate-confirmed leaders.

☞ House: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told members of his conference on a call last night that a short-term bill will be needed to fund the government at the end of September to give lawmakers more time to pass annual spending bills.

☞ Outside the Beltway: Montana’s progressive youth won a landmark court victory as a judge ruled that the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” with a law preventing the consideration of the climate impact of energy projects. The state is expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Playbook: Willis is giving the defendants in the case until midday Aug. 25 to voluntarily surrender, which Politico writes “raises the prospect of a rolling spectacle outside the Atlanta courthouse” over the next several days.

Punchbowl News: McCarthy urged his members to pass their fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills, suggesting that Senate Democrats have been more united in passing their own versions. “We’re walking into a battle to save the country,” McCarthy said. “We’re going to be at a disadvantage, especially if we don’t get all of our work done.”

The Early 202: McCarthy also didn’t say much about the Biden administration’s supplemental request for Ukraine aid on the conference call last night, beyond saying it would be looked at closely.

Axios: Some Trump allies view the Georgia case as the one most threatening to the former president.

President Joe Biden will try to bolster Asian allies against China when he welcomes the leaders of South Korea and Japan to Camp David for the countries’ first-ever three-way summit.

• The meeting is expected to yield agreements on defense and economic issues. Specifically, according to the Wall Street Journal, the leaders will lay plans for yearly joint military exercises, a new hotline, deeper cooperation on supply chains, and a pledge to hold the summit annually.
• Still, there are “limits to how close” Japan and South Korea can get due to their residual bad blood, as well as restrictions in Japan’s constitution on new alliances, as The Economist writes. The acrimony dates back to Japan’s occupation of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Just this March, a South Korean president visited Japan for the first time in more than a decade.
• Shihoko Goto, who directs the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, writes that the summit will accomplish its main objective — showing that a “constructive” three way conversation is possible — just by happening. But the real test, she says, is whether improved relations “can be institutionalized” to “withstand political change.” In other words, can Japan and Korea build an alliance that survives their next elections?

— Morgan Chalfant

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Biden picks a poor moment not to comment

President Biden probably wishes now that he’d been ready with some words of comfort for the residents of Maui as he left the beach this weekend. Instead, his “no comment” to a question about the rising death toll spurred an outrage cycle Monday in which Republicans (and some progressive personalities) accused Biden of being checked out amid an ongoing disaster.

Donald Trump of course jumped in. At day’s end, he posted a video to Truth Social offering Hawiiaans his sympathy, and attacking Biden, while weaving the president’s gaffe into a larger story of executive indifference. “It is a disgraceful thing that Joe Biden refuses to help or comment on the tragedy in Maui, just as he refused to help or comment on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.” 

The comparison to East Palestine may actually be apt — because in both cases, the White House’s communications fell out of sync with an emotionally-charged news cycle while it focused on the logistics of disaster relief.

The president issued a disaster declaration for Hawaii within hours of being asked last week, telling a crowd in Utah that, “Our prayers are with the people of Hawaii, but not just our prayers: every asset that we have will be available to them.” While there’s been growing anger at the state’s handling of its deadly wildfires — among other issues, it never activated its siren warning system for natural disasters — there’s been little criticism so far of FEMA’s response.

In Ohio, too, the Biden administration — and particularly Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — was hammered for its comms, even as state officials praised federal on-the-ground efforts.

Trump may be showing some Chutzpah with his attacks on Biden. He took criticism for his administration’s record on rail safety safety and wildfire response. But by going quiet, Biden keeps letting his critics fill the silence.

— Jordan Weissmann

Four years ago, Democrats were wringing their hands over whether to start an impeachment inquiry into then-president Donald Trump. Now, it’s the Republicans’ turn.

“It is definitely time, as we come back in September, in my opinion, for an impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R- N.J., who abandoned the Democratic Party in 2019 ahead of Trump’s first impeachment, said during a GOP members’ call on Monday.

Not everyone threw their support behind an inquiry on the call, which Semafor had access to. “I’m reluctant to go down the inquiry [path] until we get evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor,” said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb, before commending the House’s investigative committees on their work digging into the Biden family’s business dealings.

An inquiry marks the official investigation that usually precedes a vote on articles of impeachment. (Democrats skipped the inquiry step when they impeached Donald Trump over Jan. 6). House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has floated the idea of an impeachment inquiry publicly, made a careful distinction between the two steps during the same call with members.

“If we need to use the impeachment inquiry — that is not an impeachment. That is the power to the House to be able to get the documents we need,” McCarthy said.

When Semafor followed up with Bacon to understand if other colleagues shared his view, he said: “Many do… we should do this methodically. We should not cut corners like Pelosi did.”

— Kadia Goba

Darian Dalili is the son of Shahab Dalili, a U.S. legal permanent resident detained in Iran since 2016. Darian has been on a hunger strike outside the White House since late last week in the wake of a planned deal to free five U.S. prisoners held by Iran that didn’t include his father, who has also begun a hunger strike. The State Department on Monday didn’t clearly explain why he wasn’t included but said Dalili’s case has not been classified as a wrongful detention.

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, according to data from our partners at Ground News.

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: An FBI special agent who testified behind closed doors before the House Oversight Committee in July told lawmakers that the Secret Service and the Biden transition team were notified ahead of time about plans to interview Hunter Biden shortly after the 2020 election, according to the newly-released transcript of the interview.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: The New York judge overseeing Trump’s hush-money case, Juan Merchan, refused to recuse himself, ruling that Trump “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate.”

• A group of media companies attempting to jointly negotiate with tech giants over the use of their data to train AI models lost a key member.
• Fans and artists in the U.S. celebrated hip-hop’s fiftieth anniversary. Yinka Adegoke looked at how the genre traveled far from the Bronx in New York to become a major cultural force in Africa.
• The companies behind some of the biggest AI chatbots are putting their models to the test — by turning them over to thousands of hackers.