Rudy Giuliani accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of indicting him for using the RICO Act, which he famously used against the Mafia in the 1980s during his time as a Manhattan district attorney.
In a Newsmax interview with Eric Bolling, the ex-mayor of New York and Donald Trump’s former personal attorney criticized Willis for her application of the Georgia version of the RICO law – which stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations – in the 41-count indictment filed Monday.
“This is not for election disputes. I mean, this is ridiculous what she’s doing,” Giuliani said Tuesday.
Giuliani was named as one of 18 co-defendants alongside former President Donald Trump in an extensive case involving election interference in the aftermath of Georgia’s 2020 election.
Giuliani famously used the RICO law “to incarcerate some of the most dangerous criminals the world has ever seen,” Bolling noted.
Newsmax host Eric Bolling interviewed Rudy Giuliani Tuesday night about using the RICO law in the 41-count indictment filed by Fani Willis on Monday
Guiliani used the law against notorious mobsters: Fat Tony Salerno of the Genovese crime family; Tony Ducks, Lucchese family; Carmine ‘Junior’ Persico, Colombo; and Paul Castellano, boss of the mighty Gambinos.
Giuliani denounced Willis’ charge as a “ridiculous application of the statute of racketeering.”
Each of the 19 defendants is charged with violating Georgia’s RICO law, including in connection with Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
‘There’s probably no one who knows better than me. There are probably also people who know. I was the first to use it in white collar cases,” he said.
“I don’t know if she realizes it either, because she seems like a rather incompetent, sloppy prosecutor. I mean, what she did yesterday with that charge is unforgivable. If she had worked 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 bring the indictment.
Among other things, the indictment that appeared on the Internet ahead of the Grand Jury vote implied that Willis had already decided to press charges before hearing what the Grand Jury had to say, the former mayor said.
When Bolling asked Giuliani why Willis chose to use the RICO charge against the defendants, he said, “Because she’s a politician, not a lawyer.” Not an honest, honorable lawyer.’
Giuliani was charged with 13 charges — the same number as Trump — including violation of the RICO law, false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, and incitement to violate oath by a public official.
All of the defendants were charged in connection with alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia — a state that Joe Biden narrowly won and helped secure his victory over Trump.
The indictment aggregates all 18 defendants using Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law, which is based on the similar federal statute created in 1970 to address organized crime.
As a federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the 1980s, Giuliani pioneered the use of RICO laws to dismantle the mob, successfully using the federal version to prosecute the heads of New York’s so-called “Five Families” in the marathon Mafia Commission Trial.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks at the Fulton County Government Center during an August 14 press conference after charges against Donald Trump and others were announced
Giuliani was charged with 13 charges – the same number as Trump – including violation of the RICO law, false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, and solicitation of breach of oath by a public official
As a federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the 1980s, Giuliani (seen in 1987) pioneered the use of RICO to dismantle the Mafia. Now he is being charged under Georgia’s RICO law
How does an anti-gangster law apply to Trump and his allies?
The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was created in 1970 as a tool to combat 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 it was never intended that its use should be restricted solely to organized crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court noted in a 1989 opinion that the law was “broad enough to encompass a wide variety of criminal activities, take many different forms, and likely attract a wide variety of offenders.”
Within a few years of the federal law going into effect, many states began to pass their own RICO laws, including Georgia, which passed its version in 1980.
In general, RICO laws allow prosecutors to charge multiple people who commit separate crimes while working toward a common cause.
In the case against Trump and his allies, the indictment uses Georgia’s RICO law to weave together a web of various alleged crimes by claiming they were committed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise to overturn the election results.
The underlying crimes alleged in the indictment include impersonating a public official, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, conspiracy to defraud the state, and perjury.
The nearly 100-page indictment goes into great detail and lists dozens of acts by Trump or his allies to undo his election defeat, including harassing an election aide who faced false claims of fraud and attempts to convince Georgia lawmakers to series of fake voters. favorable to Trump.
In one particularly brutal episode, it also outlines a plot involving one of Trump’s lawyers who allegedly tried to access voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal data from a voting machine company.