Aug 15, 2023 12:44
Andrew McCarthy:
the federalist system designed by our Constitution gives the states primary responsibility to conduct and police elections.
Ergo, the states have laws that are tailored specifically to election irregularities and attempts to subvert state processes for tabulating and certifying votes.
Unlike Smith, Willis can invoke laws that are specifically designed to deal with election-interference conduct of the kind Trump engaged in.
That is not to say she won’t make some heads turn, particularly because she indicted Trump under Georgia’s anti-racketeering law.
We usually hear about racketeering in the federal context, where the RICO statute is used to prosecute organized crime groups.
But the basic idea behind anti-racketeering is to group a set of disparate criminal schemes under one conspiratorial arrangement.
Thus Willis depicts Trump and his campaign as the overarching racketeering enterprise, and alleges that this group engaged in a variety of schemes all aimed at corruptly reversing the election outcome - from Trump’s efforts to pressure Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to invalidate ballots cast for Biden, to the so-called “fake electors” plot to substitute a slate of Trump electors for the slate of electors who cast the state’s electoral votes for Biden, consistent with the popular election result.
It sounds like ambitious charging, but it may not be all that much of a reach.
To be sure, Willis’ election case may not be as cut-and-dried as Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents indictment.
It remains to be seen whether Wills can convince a jury of Atlantans to convict Trump. But even a newly elected President Trump could not make the Georgia prosecution go away.
If he were convicted, it would stick.
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