Former President Donald Trump attends a campaign rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 7.
Scott Morgan/Reuters
Donald Trump was indicted on Monday by Fulton County District Judge Fani Willis on more than a dozen counts related to the former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
The grand jury indicted Trump for violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), accusing Trump of participating in a broad conspiracy to overturn the election results.
“Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election of November 3, 2020,” the indictment states. “One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in Trump's favor. This conspiracy involved a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of organized crime in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”
Willis began her investigation into Trump in early 2021, shortly after he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and pressured the Republican official to “find” the votes Trump needed to win the state of Georgia. At a campaign rally on Tuesday, Trump continued to insist it was a “perfect phone call.”
RICO is a law that the district attorney praised highly and used in an unorthodox way to bring charges against teachers and musicians in the Atlanta area.
In 2015, as Fulton County prosecutor, Willis attracted national attention when she used Georgia's organized crime law to prosecute teachers, principals and other education officials in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal.
After a seven-month trial, Willis secured the conviction of 11 of the 12 defendants on charges of fraud and other offenses that may have been the result of fraud. The fraud is believed to have begun in early 2001, when statewide aptitude test scores began to rise in the 50,000-student school district.
“The reason I'm a fan of RICO is because I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis told reporters at a 2022 press conference on a gang-related indictment. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone's life. And that's why RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”
Shortly after Willis began her investigation into Trump, she hired her office to assist attorney John Floyd, known for his extensive knowledge of organized crime cases.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives for a press conference at the Fulton County Government Center in Atlanta on Monday.
John Bazemore/AP
Georgia's Organized Crime Act not only allows prosecutors to construct a story, but it also allows investigators to include a broader range of behavior in their charges, including activities that occurred outside the state of Georgia but may have been part of a larger conspiracy.
Anyone convicted of organized crime can also expect to receive harsher penalties. This is a means of exerting pressure on prosecutors who want to persuade potential co-conspirators or defendants to settle.
More about RICO: Simply put, racketeering means engaging in an illegal scheme. The term is used in the RICO Act to describe 35 crimes, including kidnapping, murder, bribery, arson and extortion.
Congress passed the RICO Act in 1970 to combat organized crime. Since then, the law has been used to target some of the most notorious Mafia members, including Antonio Corallo, head of the notorious Lucchese crime family.
The federal law is quite broad and has even been used to prosecute insider trading cases and anti-abortion activists who block access to clinics.
CNN's Sara Murray, Michelle Lou and Brandon Griggs contributed to this story.
