In Pursuit of Trump, Fani Willis Appears Poised To Surpass Even Alvin Bragg in Prosecutorial Creativity

District Attorney Alvin Bragg is no longer the only show in town when it comes to charging President Trump. Another prosecutor, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis, is readying to move on the former president. Like Mr. Bragg, she appears set to engage in creative legal thinking to corner the former commander-in-chief.Mr. Bragg relied on legal alchemy to transform misdemeanors into felonies and charge Mr. Trump where both his predecessor and federal prosecutors passed. Announcements from Ms. Willis’s office and precedents from her prosecutorial past, in cases involving teachers and rappers, suggest that she, too, is readying her own unconventional pursuit of President Trump. The investigations into Mr. Trump’s behavior in Georgia focus on, among other matters, contact he had with the Peachtree State’s Secretary of State, Bradley Raffensperger. In a telephone call that was recorded and made public, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to “find” him the 11,780 votes that constituted his margin of defeat to President Biden. It appears likely that Ms. Willis will rely on her state’s version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, originally drafted by Congress to target organized crime and known as “RICO,” to nab Mr. Trump. Legal analysts might see Mr. Bragg’s indictment as innovative, but it is Ms. Willis’s charging contortions that could set the standard for prosecutorial creativity. The shape of Ms. Willis’s strategy snapped into focus with her announcement that her charging decisions regarding efforts to interfere with the presidential election in Georgia will come during the court term that stretches between July 11 and September 1. This comes on the heels of a special grand jury report that is under seal, notwithstanding its loquacious forewoman. That information was conveyed in a letter to the Sheriff of Fulton County, Patrick Labat. In addition to articulating the timetable for possible indictments, Ms. Willis urged coordination with her office and conveyed the “need for heightened security and preparedness in coming months due to this pending announcement.” Ms. Willis cites the need for “sufficient time” to “protect the public” given that “some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment,” meaning protest that spills over into violence that “will endanger the safety of our community.”If Ms. Willis does decide to charge Mr. Trump — and a coterie of others, including his lawyer John Eastman and Mayor Giuliani, who once brought RICO charges himself as a United States Attorney — there are indications that she will use racketeering to do so. She has bragged that she has “more RICO indictments in the last 18 months, 20 months, than were probably done in the last 10 years out of this office.”In the summer of 2022, Ms. Willis noted that she is a “fan of RICO” and that “RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.” There are good reasons for a prosecutor to be confident when she mounts a RICO case because it depends on showing a pattern of behavior rather than discrete criminal acts. The Department of Justice, recognizing RICO’s reach and the harsh monetary and punitive punishments it prescribes, recommends charging only in “cases where the unlawful conduct was both continuous and egregious and when there is the prospect of significant forfeiture of ill-gotten proceeds or of interests in a tainted enterprise.”No such limit exists at the state level, however, and Ms. Willis has stretched Georgia’s provision before. In 2013, she secured the conviction of 11 Atlanta public school teachers for a cheating ring. The teachers argued that administrators pressured them to inflate students’ scores to show gains in student achievement. Ms. Willis convinced the jury that rather than educators forced into a tight spot, the teachers had become a criminal enterprise. The trial was the longest such criminal proceeding in Georgia’s history, stretching to more than eight months. Those 11 convictions, out of 12 defendants, were achieved by means of racketeering charges.A more recent case could offer another template, albeit an esoteric one, for racketeering charges against Mr. Trump. Some 28 members of “Young Slime Life”— which is known as “YSL” and which Ms. Willis’s office calls a “criminal street gang” — with conspiracy to violate Georgia’s RICO statute by engaging in illegal activities and schemes. Included in that roster was Jeffrey Lamar Williams, a rapper who performs under the name of “Young Thug.”Ms. Willis marshaled evidence of the guilt of Young Thug — and many of his comrades in YSL besides — from rap lyrics, social media posts, clothing, and other accessories. The district attorney argued that YSL was affiliated with the Bloods, a gang based at Los Angeles. Several of those charged have pleaded guilty. When Ms. Willis was criticized for using lyrics as part of her case, she retorted “I think if you decide to admit your crimes over a beat, I’m gonna use it,” and “I have some legal advice: don’t confess to crimes on rap lyrics if you do not want them used — or at least get out of my county.”

In Pursuit of Trump, Fani Willis Appears Poised To Surpass Even Alvin Bragg in Prosecutorial Creativity

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