I keep seeing references to RICO in the Trump Georgia stuff. What is it and how is it relevant to that case?

  • geekworking@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    87
    ·
    1 year ago

    Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws. These were originally made to go after organized crime bosses.

    Crime bosses will have layers of minions directly committing crimes. This lets the boss say it wasn’t them. RICO provides laws to go after an entire criminal organization, including the bosses who direct the minions to commit crimes.

    They are using the law in the Trump case because many of the direct crimes were done by minions. If they can prove that there was an organized series of crimes that were under the direction of boss Trump, they can hold him accountable for the crimes of the organization.

  • ProfessorScience@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    1 year ago

    Basically RICO allows the government to go after the leaders of an organization for a pattern of criminal activity, rather than just going after the members for individual acts. It was created to make it easier to prosecute the Mafia and other organized crime.

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    You know how when you let your dog off his leash, and he bites someone, you get in trouble for it? That’s RICO, basically.

    • Whitebrow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      1 year ago

      You tell it to bite somebody and it does*

      Otherwise it’s just negligence, but yeah, otherwise it’s accurate enough

  • lapislazuli@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I keep seeing references to RICO in The Sopranos. Was too lazy to google. Makes a lot of sense now, reading these explanations.