Rudy Giuliani lambasted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for charging him using the RICO Act, which he used against the mob in the 1980s when he was a Manhattan district attorney.
In a Newsmax interview with Eric Bolling, the ex-NYC mayor and former personal lawyer for Donald Trump criticized Willis for his application of Georgia’s version of the RICO law – which stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations – in the act of 41-count indictment filed Monday.
“It is not intended for electoral disputes. I mean, it’s ridiculous what she’s doing,’ Giuliani said on Tuesday.
Giuliani has been named as one of 18 co-defendants alongside former President Donald Trump in a high-profile case involving election interference following Georgia’s 2020 election.
Giuliani used the RICO Act “to lock up some of the most dangerous criminals the world has ever seen,” Bolling noted.
Newsmax host Eric Bolling interviewed Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday night about the use of the RICO Act in the 41-count indictment filed by Fani Willis on Monday
Guiliani has used the law against infamous gangsters: fat Tony Salerno of the Genovese crime family; Tony Ducks, Lucchese Family; Carmine ‘Junior’ Persico, Colombos; and Paul Castellano, the boss of the mighty Gambinos.
Giuliani criticized Willis’ indictment as “ridiculous racketeering law enforcement”.
Each of the 19 defendants is charged with violating Georgia’s RICO law, among other charges related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
“There’s probably no one who knows it better than me. Probably some who know it too. I was the first to use it in white-collar cases,” he said.
“Also, I don’t know if she realizes it because she seems like a pretty incompetent and sloppy prosecutor. What she did yesterday with that indictment is inexcusable. If she was working for me, I would have fired her,’ he added, referring to the fact that the indictment was posted online before the grand jury voted to drop the charges. .
The indictment webcast ahead of the Grand Jury vote implied, among other things, that Willis had already decided to indict before hearing what the Grand Jury had to say, the former mayor said.
When Bolling asked Giuliani why Willis chose to use the RICO accusation against the defendants, he replied, “Because she is a politician and not a lawyer.” Not an honest and honorable lawyer.
Giuliani was charged with 13 counts – the same number as Trump – including violation of the RICO Act, false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree and solicitation of breach of oath by a public officer.
All of the defendants were charged with trying to nullify the 2020 presidential election in Georgia – a state Joe Biden narrowly won and helped secure his victory over Trump.
The indictment unites the 18 defendants using Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which is based on the similar federal law created in 1970 to target organized crime.
As a federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the 1980s, Giuliani pioneered the use of RICO laws to bust the mob, successfully using the federal version to prosecute the leaders of the so-called ‘Five Families’ of New York in the Mafia Commission Trial marathon.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks at the Fulton County Government Center during a news conference August 14 following the announcement of indictments against Donald Trump and others.
Giuliani was charged with 13 counts – the same number as Trump – including violation of the RICO Act, false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree and solicitation of breach of oath by a public officer.
As a federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the 1980s, Giuliani (seen in 1987) was a pioneer in using RICO to bust the mob. He is now charged under Georgia’s RICO law
How does a law used against gangsters apply to Trump and his allies?
The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was introduced in 1970 as a tool in the fight against organized crime.
The law allowed prosecutors to target people in positions of authority within a criminal organization, not just lower-level people doing the dirty work.
But its use was never meant to be limited exclusively to organized crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court noted in a 1989 opinion that the law was drafted “broad enough to encompass a wide range of criminal activity, taking many different forms, and likely to attract a wide range of authors”.
A few years after the federal law took effect, many states began passing their own RICO laws, including Georgia, which passed its version in 1980.
Generally speaking, RICO laws allow prosecutors to charge multiple people who commit separate crimes while working toward a common goal.
In the case against Trump and his allies, the indictment uses Georgia’s RICO law to connect a web of various alleged crimes by claiming they were perpetrated as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise to undo the election results.
The underlying crimes alleged in the indictment include impersonating a public official, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, trespassing computing, conspiracy to defraud the state and perjury.
The nearly 100-page indictment is very detailed, listing dozens of acts by Trump or his allies to undo his election defeat, including the harassment of an election worker who faced false allegations of fraud and the attempt to persuade Georgian lawmakers to appoint a list of bogus voters. favorable to Trump.
In one particularly brazen episode, he also describes a plot involving one of Trump’s attorneys who allegedly sought to gain access to voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal data from a voting machine company.
