In August, 2023 Donald Trump and 18 others were indicted for violating Georgia's RICO law. Today we break down RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act from 1970, and learn the origins and purpose of RICO as well as how RICO cases differ from others.
Our guest is Myles Ranier, civil litigator and former federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Transcript
archival: So lately you've heard the word indictment and also the term RICO a lot. You might be wondering what those words actually mean here at home.
archival: We could know as early as next week whether the Fulton County DA will seek indictments against Mr. Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss here in Georgia.
archival: Da Fani Willis is widely expected to bring state racketeering or RICO charges against the former president and others in his inner circle.
archival: Even though this is a fourth indictment, this is why many people say [00:00:30] this is the biggest deal of all of them, correct?
archival: Yes, this is the biggest deal because of the reach of Georgia's RICO charge.
Nick Capodice: You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: And today we are talking about RICO. Quick hit. Get in, Get out. Get a t shirt. If you don't know what RICO is, you're going to know by the end of this episode.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay. So, Nick, I have been following the indictments of Donald Trump and I know [00:01:00] a little bit about the term RICO charge, but I would really like a deeper dive on this.
Nick Capodice: There's probably a lot of people out there who aren't familiar with what a RICO charge is, and it is relevant today for those who haven't heard, because Donald Trump and 18 other people were indicted for RICO charges in August of 2023.
Hannah McCarthy: So first off, RICO is an acronym, isn't it?
Nick Capodice: Yes it is. And it's an acronym because you can say it as a new word like scuba or radar. Like [00:01:30] if you say the letters AARP, that's an initialism. Technically.
Hannah McCarthy: You never fail to sneak that in, do you?
Nick Capodice: Nope. Never miss a chance to be a pedant. Hannah RICO stands for the racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Myles Ranier: RICO Statute federally was passed in 1970. So before that, what was going on or what was described as going on in the US then? And what was a problem was the power of organized crime. [00:02:00]
Nick Capodice: This is Myles Ranier.
Myles Ranier: I am currently a civil litigator in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but for eight years I was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Louisiana, in New Orleans.
Nick Capodice: And when Myles was a federal prosecutor, he handled some RICO prosecutions.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, So why did we need to make a whole new act just to deal with organized crime? Specifically.
Myles Ranier: What prosecutors were facing was [00:02:30] organized crime exists, but they really don't have any tools to prosecute it. And what I mean is you could imagine, you know, picture the kind of first half of Goodfellas, right.
archival: And Jimmy two times who got that nickname because he said everything twice. Like, I'm. Going to go get the papers, get the papers.
Myles Ranier: 1950s, 1960s New York. And you know, you have a business owner who is being shook down in a racket, [00:03:00] right? You've heard of a racket? A protection racket? Well, that's where racketeering comes from.
Hannah McCarthy: A protection racket, as in, say, a mob boss asks a bunch of local businesses to pay them for, quote, protection when it's really more like, Pay me or I'll smash your windows.
Nick Capodice: Exactly.
Myles Ranier: But prosecutors hands are tied because they have basically, you know, a guy threatening to beat up another guy is what may be an assault. You know, [00:03:30] maybe New York at that time had an extortion law, but the penalties for that were probably not very good. The only person who could be charged would be sort of a low level mobster and not some upper a head of a criminal organization and even prosecute it. You would need the guy who's being shook down to come into court and testify. And that's probably not in his long term interest or something he's going to really want to do. So the prosecutor's hands are tied.
Hannah McCarthy: So [00:04:00] this is that famous movie trope of the bottom rung henchmen taking the fall for the boss. And then that other trope of the witness not wanting to testify because it was very dangerous to do so.
archival: Were you at any time a member of a crime organization headed by Michael Corleone?
Frankie Five Angels: I don't know nothing about that.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, those tropes, I didn't know no, Godfather. I love movies with those tropes, I can't help it. Partly because they seem so antiquated. You you don't [00:04:30] hear a lot of stories of Goodfellas or Godfather style organized crime these days, but it was rampant in the US in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Myles Ranier: Obviously having a very powerful organized crime unchecked is bad for democracy, bad for society and creates all these sort of negative corollaries. So in 1969 the US Congress passes the RICO statute and it's a very good tool for prosecutors [00:05:00] in cases that are a little more complicated. One in the number of participants, the number of potential defendants or coconspirators that are involved to the number of crimes being committed. You know, even though they may be small crimes like a repeated assaults or repeated thefts or whatever, there are a lot of them that are occurring. And if they're sort of people a hierarchy in a in an enterprise that you may not be able to attack in a traditional [00:05:30] way, you can do it using a RICO statute, you know, gives you the tools and enables you to combine all those individual acts against individual defendants and into one. Indictment and one charge against a big group.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay. So it's a way to take down a criminal organization. Wrapping up a bunch of charges, small or big, and tying them into one bundle. To prosecute. Yeah. What's the potential punishment for someone found [00:06:00] guilty of a RICO charge federally?
Myles Ranier: You could face a sentence from anywhere to 0 to 20 years. However, if the RICO statute involved more serious crimes like murder, the sentence is potentially up to life, but generally 0 to 20 years. And I think in Georgia the Senate is 5 to 20 years.
Hannah McCarthy: So there are federal RICO charges, but also state ones.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, there are some famous federal RICO cases [00:06:30] like Us V Barger, which was a failed attempt by the US government to take down the Hells Angels in 1979 or the Chicago outfit in 2005, when five members of the mob were successfully convicted under RICO charges. And also 33 states have RICO laws. These are often used in cases involving gang activity. But a, quote, corrupt organization does not necessarily apply to what we think of as organized crime. [00:07:00]
Myles Ranier: The what you have to prove is an enterprise, and an enterprise can include formal and informal organizations. It could be a corporation that's obvious, right? A partnership, some sort of legally declared association, a group of people who associate with one another and were working towards a common goal and using crimes [00:07:30] to commit that goal in an enterprise can be, you know, totally legitimate or legal, but it can also be illegal. So, you know, a group of guys meeting to play pickup basketball, you know, could qualify as an enterprise, you know, But if they also were selling drugs or, you know, shaking down, you know, the corner store, then, you know, could could graduate to a criminal enterprise.
Nick Capodice: There's one other [00:08:00] civil RICO case I got to bring up here. It's from 2013. This is a case that makes me when someone asks, what's up with the Donald Trump RICO case reply Which one?
Hannah McCarthy: Wait. Donald Trump has been charged in a RICO case before.
Nick Capodice: He has indeed. Art Cohen versus Donald Trump was going to be heard in the US District Court for the Southern District of California. Art Cohen had enrolled in the so-called Trump University Trump University.
archival: We teach success. That's what it's all about success. [00:08:30] It's going to happen to you.
Nick Capodice: Which he said had promised mentorships and real estate secrets and delivered, quote, Neither Donald Trump nor a university end quote. Now, this case was settled for $25 million shortly after Trump took office.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow. Okay. So now I want to get to Georgia to the 2023 indictment of Donald Trump and others. What specifically are the RICO charges there?
Nick Capodice: I'm going to lay it all [00:09:00] out. And some things Myles told me to watch out for right after this break.
Hannah McCarthy: But first, you know what's not a corrupt organization?
Nick Capodice: Oh, goodness Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: We aren't. I mean, I'm not talking about the potential corruption of your soul, Nick.
Nick Capodice: I have played my share of cards and dice.
Hannah McCarthy: But Civics 101 is a listener supported show, utterly devoid of graft, and we rely on that support. Consider making a tax deductible donation in any amount at our website, civics101podcast.org.
Hannah McCarthy: We're [00:09:30] back. We're talking about RICO here on Civics 101. And Nick, you were just about to jump into the RICO charges against Donald Trump in 18 others in Georgia.
Nick Capodice: I was indeed. On August 15th, 2023, 23 jurors. That is the maximum amount you can have in a grand jury voted unanimously, as you have to do, to indict someone to [00:10:00] indeed indict Donald Trump and 18 others under Georgia's RICO law. The indictment is 98 pages. There are 41 counts. The first count is a violation of the RICO Act, and it lists 161 acts of racketeering. Now, I am not going to read them, but you should. Dear listener, though I do want to hear the introduction of the indictment. It's about as plain as you can get. Hannah, would you read it for the class?
Hannah McCarthy: Sure will. Here we go. Quote, [00:10:30] Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3rd, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, [00:11:00] elsewhere in the state of Georgia and in other states.
Nick Capodice: Thank you, Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: You're welcome. I just want to clarify, the 161 acts are part of that RICO charge. That seems like an awful lot.
Nick Capodice: They are indeed. They're part of that one charge. And it does seem like a lot. You don't always see such a long list of specific acts outlined in an indictment, but that could be part of a legal strategy. Here's Myles Rainer again, former federal prosecutor and currently a civil litigator.
Myles Ranier: There's a couple philosophies, [00:11:30] but behind including all these overt acts and an indictment, one is, you know, it makes a great read, right? So if you go through and read this indictment, there is all sorts of scandalous allegations that are now out in the public. So in some ways, instead of the prosecutors having to defend themselves and explain, they could have charged a four page indictment that said so-and-so committed, you know, violated the [00:12:00] Georgia RICO statute, and here are the crimes that are committed and not listed, all those overt acts. And it just leads the public to say, well, do they have any evidence? You know, is there what do they have? But by listing, you know, these 140 or 100 and something overt acts, it kind of one tells a story, you know, and two, lays out, hey, here's all the evidence we have. And then three, strategically it kind of guarantees or at least makes it [00:12:30] that a judge is much more likely to allow those events to be discussed because they are contained in the indictment. They were kind of reviewed by a grand jury as opposed to not listing them. And then you're sort of fighting with every event you want to introduce about whether it's relevant, whether it's, you know, prejudicial. And a judge can say, I don't know if I'm going to let that in.
Nick Capodice: I asked Myles, why RICO? You know, and he made it clear he did not want to [00:13:00] opine on anything political whatsoever with us. But he did give a purely legal hypothesis on why a prosecutor might use RICO in a case like this.
Myles Ranier: You know, it looks like from their perspective that they saw that a lot of crimes had been committed, that these crimes were committed in furtherance of a sort of common goal, that these crimes were [00:13:30] committed by dozens of people who themselves were committing, you know, hundreds of acts to commit these crimes in furtherance of this common goal. And so in light of that, RICO is the ideal statute in these types of situations to use in terms of being effective for prosecutors based on the charges contained in the indictment, you've got making false statements, impersonating a public [00:14:00] officer, a forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, defrauding the state, regular trespass, regular theft. You know, so that's about ten or a dozen criminal statutes that they've alleged have been violated. I can see why procedurally RICO was a good fit if the prosecutors believed that these crimes had been committed.
Hannah McCarthy: So I'm getting that a RICO charge is a special, [00:14:30] powerful kind of charge in that it can. Many other charges. Does it differ in other ways from the typical court process?
Nick Capodice: What do you mean?
Hannah McCarthy: Like, can you change your plea for a lesser sentence? Can you appeal the decision? All of that? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Nick Capodice: You can or you can settle like Trump did in his other RICO case, same as usual. And this is actually one of the things Myles told us to watch out for in the coming months.
Myles Ranier: You can plead out, you can, you know, and [00:15:00] if you look at the certain indictments, you'll see a lot of stuff about unindicted coconspirator. You know, that that defendant did this with unindicted coconspirator and that can you know, you can start asking some questions. One, why is he unindicted or why is she unindicted? Did they just not have enough evidence? Did you know the prosecutors just say, hey, we have to cut this thing off at a certain point, we can't indict 200 people, so we're just going to focus on the top 30? Or is that unindicted [00:15:30] coconspirator or cooperating witness You know, they themselves are appearing in the grand jury and providing a lot of this information that is now contained in the indictment. Who are these unindicted coconspirators? Are they going to pop up as witnesses later? You know, do the the people who are charged, are they reading the indictment being, oh, that's so-and-so, you know, that rascal? You know, I can't believe he, you know, became a state's witness or, you know, So, yeah, those are the little inside baseball [00:16:00] when, you know, you're kind of reading these things.
Nick Capodice: And another little snippet of Inside baseball that Myles told me about was one of the difficulties with RICO cases. They can take a long, long time.
Myles Ranier: Look, I will say, you know, in an indictment that long with that many people trying, this case could take months and say that because I know in Atlanta right now there is a gang prosecution associated [00:16:30] with a record label. And it's there's a rapper charge named Young Thug. And occasionally, just out of curiosity, I'll Google the case or see what's going on with it. And it has been going on for, I want to say, at least six months. And, you know, looks like it may last, you know, a year. So if this thing does go to trial, it sounds like it could last a very long time. There is just a lot of procedural things you have [00:17:00] to do when you have a dozen defendants or 20 defendants sitting in a court. Each one of their lawyers has an opportunity to be heard on every objection or every point of evidence. And it just can create an incredible amount of delay. Each one of those defendants lawyers would have an opportunity to cross-examine a witness. So, you know, instead of 1 or 2 cross-examinations, you're getting 22 if there are 30 people in the trial. 30. So. That would be a downside [00:17:30] to RICO, right? And that would be a downside of these kind of sprawling gang indictments or criminal enterprise indictments is if they end up going to trial and, you know, nobody pleads out, you could be in court for a year. And it's just an incredible drain on the court's resources, on the prosecutor's resources, on the defendants themselves. You know, you might start coming up on speedy [00:18:00] trial rights and, you know, things like that when you know something is this complicated and big to move around.
Hannah McCarthy: Last thing, Nick, there are 19 alleged conspirators total. And of course, Donald Trump is the most mentioned in the news. But I've also seen a lot of attention paid to Rudy Giuliani specifically. What's going on there?
Nick Capodice: It's not ironic technically, but you might call it a little bit of situational irony.
Myles Ranier: Yes. You know, so Giuliani [00:18:30] cut his teeth as a US attorney, you know, a federal prosecutor in Southern district of New York, you know, one of the most prestigious offices of the US attorneys and the Department of Justice. And Giuliani was famous for taking on and defeating the Italian organized crime and mafia in New York and using this very statute to attack them and take them out.
Speaker13: We're going [00:19:00] to have to attack it as a business, not just as individual crime. We have followed up with civil RICO cases. There'll be some point in the future in which we will really destroy the power of the mafia.
Myles Ranier: And so it's certainly ironic or, you know, sad or, you know, bitter, depending on how you look at things that, you know, he is now himself, someone who used this and may have been sort of a pioneer in using it or certainly who wielded it very effectively against, you know, pernicious influence in society has now been charged [00:19:30] with violating or at least the Georgia version of the statute.
Hannah McCarthy: Uh, okay. I see. It's ironic, but only by Alanis Morissette's definition.
Nick Capodice: Did you know. The only ironic thing in the song Ironic is that none of the things in it are ironies.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, Nick, I guess that is ironic.
Nick Capodice: Don't you think?
An attorney general. Turned 79. Used RICO constantly [00:20:00] to fight organized crime. Took down the five families as the prosecutor.Now he's been charged. As a coconspirator. Isn't it situationally ironic, don't you think? A little bit more of a coincidence than an irony. Yeah. And I really do think. It's like Rain on your wedding day. It's a [00:20:30]free ride when you've already paid. It's the Good advice that you just didn't take. And who would've thought, it figures??
Speaker14: Real. Well, that's RICO.
Nick Capodice: With the many apologies to Alanis Morissette, Alanis Morissette, you are a super rock star soloist. [00:21:00] You're good to the max. This episode was made by me Nick Capodice with You. Hannah McCarthy. Christina Phillips is our senior producer and Rebecca Lavoie, our executive producer. And so much more. Special thanks. Go out to my lawyer sister, Cami, for helping me out on this one. This is a song by Nando. I love it. And the rest of the episode we had music by Scott Holmes, Scan Globe, Scott McCloud, Lobo Loco, The New Fools. Mo Light. Fabian Tell Eden Avery. El Flaco Collective. Ben Nelson. Ryan James Carr. Sarah the Instrumentalist. Chad Crouch and my favorite enterprise [00:21:30] musically, Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.