Former President Donald Trump’s new charges by Fulton County District Atty. Fani Willis turned the U.S. media into a beehive of euphoria, delighted that she pulled the trigger on Trump’s fourth indictment in six months. Unfortunately for the press, no more indictments against Trump are expected with the former chief executive plowing ahead with his busy campaign. Democrats and the press hoped the latest indictment using RICO [Racketeering Influenced Corruption Organization] Act statutes that applies to organize crime, drug cartels and gangs would apply to Trump’s attempts to question the validity of the Nov. 3, 2020 election. How Willis decided on RICO to charge Trump and 18 other defendants, largely Trump’s legal staff, working hard to dispute the election results is anyone’s guess. Democrats and the press had no problem accepting Willis’ charges to finally get rid of Trump.
Partisan political and legal hacks tout Willis’ case as “granular,” going into the Nth most detail to prove that Trump and associates pursued an organized strategy to reverse Georgia election results. Trump went to bed on Election Night, told he had won the election, only to be told the next morning that Democrat Joe Biden had overtaken him in all the votes counts, leading to resounding election victory. Trump couldn’t fathom the results that showed him winning on Election Night only to be reversed when more votes came in. Never before in the history of U.S. elections had universal mail-in ballots been used to tally the vote. Trump’s advisers feared that Democrats’ registration election advantage would eventually prevail and it certainly did. It didn’t take long for Trump to find out he lost the election. As more votes trickled in, Biden’s victory grew bigger by the hour.
Trump’s election attorneys realized that there was no way to reverse the universal mail-in ballots that favored Biden than to dispute the results, claiming election fraud. When no election fraud was found by any court, Trump was forced to accept the results and hastily depart the White House with his personal belongings thrown into moving boxes shipped to his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago residence. All of Trump’s legal experts were dumbfounded by the election results, defying pre-election polls showing that Trump was actually winning the race. Trump’s campaign consultants didn’t take into account universal mail-in ballots that gave Biden a decisive advantage heading into Election Day. Trump backers hadn’t considered how Covid-19 influenced voters, with many Democrats, Republicans and independents fearful that things could get worse without a major change in leadership.
Trump’s campaign and legal team didn’t consider the effect of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis streets would also tilt the election toward Biden. However many Blacks Trump hoped to get on Election Day, he got that much fewer because the Biden campaign team had done a good job of painting Trump as a White supremacist or racist. When you take the Covid-19 global pandemic and George Floyd into account, it certainly took votes away from Trump. Whatever happened on Election Night, Trump strategists were dumbfounded that Biden captured so many more votes, leading the Trump team to cry foul. Willis wants the public to think that Trump organized a group of criminals to circumvent legal counting of Georgia’s vote. Questioning the Georgia election results was not an attempt to steal election results but to get the vote count as accurate as possible.
Willis can charge Trump and his 18 defendants with anything she wants but must get a jury to buy into the charges. How does it make sense that Trump organized a gang of election skeptics to undermine Georgia’s election laws? Fain Willis cites Trump’s Jan. 2, 2020 phone call with Secretary of state Brad Raffensperger where Trump asked him to find 11,780 votes. Trump of course meant to find legitimate votes perhaps accidentally or deliberately not counted. But Wills thinks an ambiguous phone call is categorical proof of Trump’s guilt. How could she think that the former president would ask Raffensperger to do anything illegal to find votes? Democrats and the press give Trump no presumption of innocence only convicting him in the court of public opinion. Willis has a weak case against Trump because she over reached on the charges, dragging Georgia’s RICO statute into the case.
Willis overcharged Trump and 18 defendants using Georgia’s RICO law to lump his campaign into a criminal gang. Trump wanted Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to check what went wrong when he had a decisive lead on Election Night but watched his lead gone forever on the next day. Trump’s election officials couldn’t resolve how universal mail-in ballot skewed the Georgia election results to Biden. How Willis thinks she can invoke RICO statues to prosecute Trump and his campaign is anyone’s guess. Overcharging is the biggest tripwire for prosecutors pushing for charges beyond the facts in evidence. Willis has no facts that show Trump’s campaign rising to the level of a criminal gang or drug cartel to invoke RICO to prosecute attempts to get an accurate vote count. No one in the Democrat Party or press thinks Willis engaged in overkill when it came to charging Trump and his campaign.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
