Tuesday, September 16, 2025

How Is Yelling In A Restaurant Where The President Is Dining…

Deputy AG Blanche: RICO is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and committing wrongful acts… So is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner and accost him with vile words?

Collins: They were just shouting basically, in his vicinity.

Blanche: So you're asking whether there's damage done by four individuals screaming and yelling at the president of our United States while he's trying to have dinner? That can't be a serious question

Collins: People can protest the president.
... a predicate act? “Damage done” by screaming and yelling at the President is not RICO. predicate act. It’s even de minimus under civil law. At most, it’s grounds to forcibly remove the screamers from the restaurant. But RICO? Don’t be absurd. Especially if “People can protest the President.” Blanche has made his legal position incoherent. He must know that.

Popehat, an actual former AUSA who understands RICO jurisprudence, weighs in:
Saying mean things to Donald Trump is not a RICO predicate act. Even YELLING at Donald Trump is not a RICO predicate act.

/2 Also: if you suggest that shouting at the President in a restaurant is RICO, you are (1) completely without shame or self-respect, and (2) believe, probably accurately, that your chosen audience is made up of total morons.
Blanche tries to argue the “conspiracy” is the “violence” in the street (what he describes sounds like the protesters in LA, before the NG and the Marines arrived.) Making the connection between protesters angry about ICE, and people protesting the President’s actions in D.C., other than the obvious: they don’t like Trump’s policies, would run headlong into the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
The violence on the streets of LA may not have been a peaceable assembly, but they weren’t a predicate act that connects the group in a D.C. restaurant, even if everyone in both groups got funding from one source.

These are the prosecutors we’re supposed to be afraid of.
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1 comment:

  1. The Thought Criminal5:20 AM

    I really think it's necessary to look at Blanche's activities in SDNY to see how corrupt he's always been because I can't believe he hasn't been all along.

    ReplyDelete

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