Jay Kuo writes:

[Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis understands RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization] law well. She’s famous for having brought broad state RICO charges to bust up a ring of administrators and educators who were in on a scheme to help students cheat on standardized tests, using money to reward those who aided the effort while punishing those that refused to help.

Willis explained state RICO law perfectly then. “You don’t, under RICO, have to have a formal, sit-down dinner meeting where you eat spaghetti,” she said, likely referencing a famous scene from the movie Goodfellas. “But what you do have to do is all be doing the same thing for the same purpose. You all have to be working towards that same goal. In this case, the goal—inflate test scores illegally.”

Last year, Willis brought a 56-count RICO indictment of more than two dozen people associated with a gang called Y.S.L., including the Atlanta rapper Jeffery Williams known widely as Young Thug.

And just last week, Willis’s grand jury issued RICO indictments against eight alleged associates of the PDE street gang, who are accused of running a pandemic unemployment insurance conspiracy spanning multiple states.

That last one is bad news for the Georgia election interference defendants. The same grand jury just saw an example of how to apply the elements of a RICO charge, and it came back with indictments. They are now educated about how the law works, and today and tomorrow they will be getting the case about Trump and his co-conspirators.

It’s almost like Willis planned it that way. [Continue reading…]