Last week a grand jury in Georgia indicted 61 anti-“cop city” protesters on RICO charges.

A total of 61 protestors have been charged with violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act. Some face additional charges of domestic terrorism and money laundering. Most are not from Georgia…

Arrests began back in May 2022, when protestors were taken into custody at the training center site and accused of throwing Molotov cocktails towards officers and causing a small fire as police officers tried to clear the site.

In December, five protestors were charged with domestic terrorism and other offenses after officials alleged they “threw rocks at police cars and attacked EMTs outside the neighboring fire stations with rocks and bottles.”

Protests turned violent in Downtown Atlanta in January, when protestors set a police car on fire and broke businesses windows. Five people were arrested that night and are the only co-defendants in the recent indictment that face domestic terrorism and arson in the first degree charges, in addition to the RICO charge.

The progressive left has been doing its best to stir outrage over the treatment of the protesters, many of whom were arrested on charges of domestic terrorism. Now it seems the grand jury has upped the ante with RICO charges which can be particularly severe in Georgia. But it turns out the grand jury who indicted the protesters is the same one that indicted Trump and his associates on RICO charges:

The @ajc has confirmed that the same Fulton County grand jury that handed up indictments against Trump and his codefendants also handed up these indictments involving the efforts by activists to block the Atlanta public safety center: https://t.co/dWvr6WQR4g

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) September 5, 2023

Trump and a group of his associates were also hit with RICO charges in Georgia a couple weeks ago:

The sweeping 41-count indictment also names lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Ray Smith, along with several others. All were charged with violating Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) act.

In an indictment handed up to the judge around 9 p.m. and made public just before 11 p.m., Trump was charged with felony racketeering and numerous conspiracy charges, court filings show.

The racketeering charge carries a sentence of five to 20 years, while a conspiracy conviction can result in a minimum sentence of one year in prison with a variable maximum sentence.

Some on the left will want to argue the RICO charges are too severe against the protesters while some on the right will argue they are too severe for Trump. The same grand jury brought both indictments though different prosecutors were involved. Fani Willis, the DA for Fulton County, is the prosecutor in the Trump case. The protester case is being handled by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr because the DeKalb County DA pulled out of prosecuting those cases back in June.

Citing philosophical differences with other agencies, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced Friday that her office will no longer prosecute current cases connected to the proposed police fire and training facility near Atlanta, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents.

The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, will prosecute the cases, according to statements from Boston and Carr.

Boston, a Democrat who was reelected in 2020, said her office had been part of a multijurisdictional group of law enforcement agencies working the cases, which have included domestic terrorism charges in some instances.

So DA Boston wanted to give protesters a pass or maybe a slap on the wrist and when it became clear that wasn’t what was going to happen she removed herself from the process.

Maybe this is just a situation proving that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. Certainly the grand jury involved in both of these cases doesn’t seem to be playing political favorites.

Update: Here’s the list of everyone charged. By my count only 13 of the 61 are from Georgia. Here’s AG Carr’s announcement. He cites the refrain “If you build it, we will burn it” which the group chanted repeated as further proof this group is willing to use violence to achieve their ends.