What’s become of the presumption of innocence?
The question is an urgent one due to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s election interference case against Donald Trump and 18 others, which she has dubiously framed as a racketeering conspiracy.
Why has DA Willis invoked Georgia’s version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is typically applied to mobsters engaged in the familiar rackets of murder, extortion, trafficking in narcotics and stolen goods, gambling, prostitution and so on? Because there’s a giant hole in her case: the lack of a clear crime to which Trump and his co-defendants can plausibly be said to have agreed.
[There *are* crimes alleged in the indictment, but committed by peripheral characters. The RICO predicate is so far stretched around those, however, that Willis had to rely on public tweets to allege a secret conspiracy. Even the crime alleged in The Call doesn’t look like a crime or conspiracy based on the evidence at hand so far; it just looks like Trump refusing to believe he lost and attempting to prove he didn’t. Those attempts certainly should carry some *political* consequences, but … — Ed]
Join the conversation as a VIP Member