by Sara Dell'Acqua
Trump surrendered himself at the Fulton County jail at 7.30 PM ET on Thursday, 24th of August. He already paid 10% of a $200.000 bond and agreed to other release conditions, such as not attacking defendants and witnesses of the trial on social media. He was the first former US president to have to take a mugshot.
One of the laws that incriminated Donald Trump in Georgia is an anti-mafia law. The law is called Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). It was initially used to press charges against Italian-American mafia bosses in the 70s. Its goal is to punish chiefs of criminal groups, even if they don’t commit crimes directly. The law was approved on the federal level, and its use became widespread in New York between the 80s and the 2000s. Trump is accused of being the chief of a criminal organization, mainly composed of the staff of his electoral campaign, that tried to overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
The charge Trump is facing in Georgia is the only state incrimination, the other three that the former president is facing are at a federal level. Trump could grant himself grace for federal charges if he was reelected, but he would still have to face state-level charges.
Prosecutor Fani Willis, who pressed charges against Trump and his collaborators, is trying to prove that Trump was chief of a group that committed various crimes trying to overturn the results of the 2020 elections in Georgia. The reason Trump and his collaborators aimed at overturning the results in Georgia is that Biden won it by very few votes.
They are accused of having made false statements about a state-led organization, considered a crime in Georgia but not in all the US. This accusation refers to having stated that the vote counters bribed the elections. Other than that, they are charged with having tampered with electronic machines to vote, having tried to convince Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State in Georgia, to “find” 11.780 votes, having tried to cast fraudulent electoral votes through fake members of the electoral college. The electoral college is the process through which the popular vote is expressed in an aggregated form.
Trump has been charged with (1) soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, (2) conspiring to impersonate a public officer, (3) conspiring to commit forgery with false electors, (4) conspiring to commit false statements, (5) making false statements, and (6) conspiring to file false documents. His collaborators all have a specific set of charges.
The strength of the RICO law is that it allows to treat these different crimes as parts of a criminal system and to press charges against who puts the system in place, maintains it and acts as the head of it. Trump is not only incriminated for the crimes he committed personally, but also for having been the head of a group trying to overturn national elections.
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