Wednesday, August 16, 2023

🛡️

This is what they’re doing with the indictment out there for all to read. The Georgia trial will be televised, but tell me again how that will be the magic shield against these kinds of lies.

Speaking of which, let’s look at that indictment:
To prove RICO, you have to prove that a group of individuals were organized and put together to accomplish an unlawful objective. You then have to prove that there was some kind of structure or organization, with various people receiving direction from above and carrying out certain missions "in furtherance" of the criminal objective. RICO statutes typically require 2-3 "predicate acts" be committed by each of the charged defendants.
The following are excerpts of that analysis that specifically reference Mark Meadows:
Trump, Mark Meadows, and John McEntee draft a memo for their plan to disrupt and delay counting electoral votes from 6 states on J6. Pence was to refuse to count those states and return the issue to the state legislatures who would the adopt the alternate slate of Trump electors, citing "fraud." 
... 
Meadows flies to GA and attempts to observe an audit of signature-verification ballots by investigators. He is denied entry because it isn't a public meeting. 
... 
Meadows then offers to pay the Chief Investigator out of Trump campaign funds if he will speed up the audit. 
... 
Jenna then wrote a memo to Trump that Pence should not open the envelopes with the votes from the 6 states because they were "in dispute." 
... 
Trump and Meadows then call Brad Raffensperger on the recorded call. Trump makes 12 different false statements in that call.
I threw in Jenna Ellis, too, because Jordan did. And a reminder that “predicate acts” don’t have to be pulling the trigger. Aiding the criminal enterprise is enough. One act will get you there.
In the Georgia indictment, Meadows has more than one act.

Most people aren’t paying granular attention to these cases, and will really only pay attention to the verdicts.  But will it matter when these cases are tried?
I think the indictments are affecting that response. I don’t think verdicts will dramatically change things. But they couldn’t hurt! Well, yeah, there’s always that.
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1 comment:

  1. rustypickup12:30 PM

    Oddly enough my experience with RICO is not in my professional capacity as a lawyer (although criminal law is completely outside my area of practice and expertise) but as a juror for a federal racketeering trial against a drug gang. That case had three defendants and predicated acts around drug sales and shootings. The trial took 5 weeks and had over 70 witnesses. It wouldn't be difficult to imagine a trial with 19 defendants, likely far more witnesses and many more predicated acts will take substantially longer. Even the mechanics of 19 different counsel having the potential opportunity to question each witness will create an enormous drag on a fast trial.

    Jury selection alone could take a month. For the case I was on, they called 140+ jurors, a much bigger pool than normal, because they knew that many potential jurors would be unable to take that much time off from work and other responsibilities. Each juror is asked a battery of questions, with often follow up depending on the responses. With the particular judge hearing the case, for efficiency he asked all the questions of the jurors even though the questions had been submitted by counsel. With many jurors, the counsel would gather at side bar out of the hearing of the jury pool to discuss answers, register objections and to determine follow up. Then there were the peremptory challenges, each defendant gets a number plus those of the prosecution. Just sorting them out and having an orderly process to use them took a whole afternoon. That was with only three defendants!

    Trump and his codefendants are going to be spending months at trial. (The billable hours per attorney will be astounding.) I just can't see how Trump can campaign given the time requirements, and I don't in anyway support delaying the trial for the convenience of a defendant campaigning. With good counsel and a cooperative defendant, it's certainly possible that Trump could be acquitted. The RICO charge is very complicated and difficult for most people to understand. The jury instructions on RICO stretched well over an hour, and I had the benefit of a legal education to parse what was being asked of the jury. Even with that, we ended up requesting the instructions be read a second time just so everyone on the jury was satisfied that they understood what we were deciding. With so many elements need for a conviction, it's possible for good counsel to convince the jury that the prosecution came up short on even one required element. In short, even an acquittal will take many months of actual court time.

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