One of the nation’s top RICO lawyers with over 40 years of experience litigating high-profile criminal cases said Donald Trump’s Georgia election trial will take place in a federal courtroom. Buddy Parker, a partner with Maloy Jenkins Parker legal practice, predicted that Trump’s legal team will successfully make a motion to move the case into federal court.
Parker said Trump’s team will argue the case must be moved because the actions described in the indictment took place while Trump was president.
“As an officer of the United States being charged with a violation of the law of the state of Georgia, under concepts of federalism, a officer of the United States can, on motion, require the case to be transferred to the United States District Court,” Parker told Straight Arrow News in an interview.
As Parker explained, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wilis would still prosecute the case under Georgia state statutes, but it would be heard by a District Court judge under the federal rules of evidence and criminal procedure.
Trump’s legal team requested his New York hush money case be moved to federal court. However, Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied the motion because he said the 34 charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg were not related to a president’s official acts. The former president is accused of falsifying business records to hide a payment to a porn star.
“It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties,” Judge Hellerstein wrote in the order denying the motion.
“That’s not going to be the case in Atlanta, because he was the president of the United States at this time. And so he’s going to prevail in transferring the case,” Parker predicted.
Parker said while Willis has had success in other RICO cases, she is inexperienced in a federal courtroom.
Willis confirmed that she intends to try all 19 defendants together. According to Parker, that means the other defendants could also be tried with Trump in federal court even though they weren’t federal officers.
“So co-conspirators are in essence agents of each other. So that if the theory of liability is that they’re agents of the federal officer, then their case gets transferred to the federal court as well,” Parker said.
Trump and 18 others, including his attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, were charged Monday, Aug. 14, in a 41-count indictment.
The indictment includes a charge under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the state, and false statements and writings.
Although they are indicted together, not every defendant faces each charge. The grand jury issued arrest warrants for the defendants. Willis is giving them until Friday, Aug. 25, at noon to voluntarily surrender.
Willis said she will request that the trial take place within the next six months, but it is ultimately up to the judge.
The charges were brought as a RICO case, meaning the defendants are accused of a conspiracy that “contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity.”
“The prosecutors have to show that someone in that organization, like Donald Trump, committed these two predicate acts. And what those are, are certain types of crimes that are identified in the statute,” University of Georgia School of Law professor John Meixner said.
The defendants are accused of joining together, or forming an organization, to unlawfully change the outcome of an election. Meixner explained that one of the keys to understanding RICO law is knowing that the term “organization” is very broad.
“And that’s one of the things that makes the RICO statute so powerful. It allows prosecutors to bring in sort of a wide variety of evidence about a single or organization and use that to show a series of racketeering acts the prosecution thinks happened,” Meixner said.
There are unindicted co-conspirators in the Trump-Georgia case. As Meixner explained, they may be cooperating with the prosecution and could have worked out plea deals.
