If Willis thought she could get a jury to convict, I’m sure she would have indicted him along with the rest. Lindsey’s phone call was apparently too borderline.
Remember, this has to get past a jury. An acquittal of the charges would be worse than not bringing them at all. That would let someone like Graham show up on the Sundays shows saying “See! Trump did nothing wrong!”
So Lindsay will be on the Sunday shows stammering about his innocence, the injustice being done to Trump and company and how the justice system is broken. Yet, he is walking away with no charges.
That’s the argument Republicans are making not only in the fake electors case, but J6 as well. If Cletus called and whined it’s a so what, that’s not criminal. If Cletus was in a basement office at the Georgia Capitol signing paperwork claiming to be an official elector from the State of Georgia and casting Georgia’s electoral votes for Trump, even after three recounts showed Trump lost, then he should have to answer for participating in a multi-state scheme to commit election fraud.
It’s like saying Joe Biggs just happened to be walking by the Capitol when the Capitol Police flung the doors open and invited Trump supporters in for unguided tours and ransacking of offices.
Indeed, which is why prosecutors generally are quite reserved with bringing RICO charges. Fani Willis is pushing the limits in circumstances where the limits should not be pushed.
Mark my words, SCOGA absolutely will bail out Fat Boy’s dumb ass. This is not a bunch of poor black Atlanta school employees fudging their standardized test results.
What she should have done is charge all of them with the misdemeanors and low-level felonies they actually did. Yes, it’s a lot less satisfying than locking everyone up for a few years. But it was readily achievable and legally sustainable on appeal.
Which is also how all of those “Cop City” protesters should have been charged. RICO has gotten way out of hand in Georgia, and it’s ripe for getting shot down.
It’s, at best, a textbook example of soliciting an elections official to do vote fraud, which is only a misdemeanor violation under Georgia law. And far more likely, it’s protected free speech. People get to tell public officials how they think they ought to do their jobs.
Some years ago I saw Cleta Mitchell on O’Reilly as a representative for one of the right wing astroturf groups claiming that the left wing organizations had too much influence and they needed to be sued. Part of the right wing’s agenda at the time referred to as “defund the left”.
So eleven of them were indicted by and identical 20 to 1 vote. Since in GA the names of these jurors are made public it should be easy to figure out who that one is.
Let’s see who gets all the threats once the MAGATs dox them.
People can certainly opine publicly how they think public officials should do their jobs, but it’s another thing altogether to make direct contact to solicit the official to commit vote fraud.
The misdemeanor charge would be appropriate if Senator Graham made his phone call in a vacuum, independently. If he coordinated with the Trump campaign, which was also formulating slates of fake electors and ultimately the assembly of various violent terrorist militia groups to commit violence at the US Capital, there’s the RICO angle that elevates the charge.
And can we note that there is absolutely no place for an elected official from a neighboring state to insert themselves into the electoral processes of Georgia? That should warrant him a censure in the Senate, at the very least.
But Cletus didn’t have fraudulent intent. He believed Uncle Tucker’s nightly bullshit. So he joined Fani Willis’s RICO conspiracy without even doing, or intending to do, anything unlawful!
Trump clearly had fraudulent intent. He knew it was bullshit, which he only served to confirm by telling Raffensperger that he just needed him to find 11,780 votes. That’s why he should be charged with soliciting an elections official to do voter fraud.
But please, by all means, go ahead and defend the Cop City RICO indictments.
I was mainly referring to already convicted criminal fuckwit Flynn.
“Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel”
(((Major Snicker)))
From my favorite-ever episode of The Simpsons:
Won’t do that. Their protest is stupid and misguided, but they did not engage in an organized criminal conspiracy.
Only the best people…
Geesh!!!
Same goal. Same crime. Overthrowing the government. Not excused or mitigated by less lethal methods.
They agreed to use civil disobedience tactics to unlawfully prevent a public/private development they opposed from going forward. They did the RICO! It’s just that the RICO is very, very bad as applied. Same with the Trump crew.
The other revelation from this report? That there was clearly 1 solid MAGA Trumptard on the grand jury.
Rhyming “yokel” with “folk’ll”… 
Again we see that elected R officials are immune from prosecution. It ain’t just the president and that stupid OLC Memo.
Joe Biggs wasn’t indicted for the RICO. He might plausibly have been indicted for the RICO, but he wasn’t. He was indicted and convicted for various conspiracy and individual offenses which ended up costing him 17 years in the federal pen.
What Fani Willis and Chris Carr are both doing is using RICO as a means to seek and obtain convictions and punishments that are vastly disproportionate to the underlying criminal violations that serve as predicates under the RICO statute. And that’s a bad thing.
