(WWJ) – After charges were brought Monday night, former President Donald Trump has now been indicted four times, resulting in a total of 91 charges. If he were to be convicted of all counts, he could be looking at more than 700 years.
And while none of the cases are based in Michigan, the state features prominently in the cases against the former president, as WWJ’s Zach Clark learns on a new Daily J podcast.
And that includes the latest indictment, handed down by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, accusing Trump and 18 others of trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Trump is facing 13 charges himself, most notably a violation of the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, alleging he was the head of a “criminal enterprise.”
If the RICO charge sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the charge prosecutors often use to bring down mobsters and organized crime groups. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted on a RICO charge in 2013.
“My thinking here from the defense point of view, if I’m gonna have to represent Donald Trump, ‘how long is this going to take?’ When you’ve got 18 other defendants, they will all have different lawyers, they will all have different counts,” said WWJ Legal Analyst Charlie Langton.
“I’m just thinking this is gonna take a year to try this case. In the Kwame Kilpatrick case… that took about six months. And if I remember correctly, there were only about four or five defendants in that case. Now you triple that… this is going to be a very, very difficult trial,” he said.
George Donnini, a Metro Detroit defense attorney, says the RICO charge allows the Fulton County DA to “bring in things that happened outside of the district.”
“As you read this indictment, there are acts that occurred across seven states, mostly those states that were closer in the election. And typically, a local district attorney is not going to be able to bring in things that happened outside that district,” he said.
Langton says he was “intrigued” by the number of references to Michigan in the case in Georgia.
“It wouldn’t surprise me that there would be some witnesses from Michigan that would go to further this scheme. Because if you develop a strategy – remember, you can’t just win Georgia, you’ve got to win other states to become president. And so you’ve got to try to undo the election not only in Georgia, but in Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states,” Langton said.
He says “if they were scheming in Michigan, they were also scheming in Georgia.” So the jury in Georgia must be told about what was going on in Michigan and other states.
Back in June Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 Michiganders in an alleged “false electors” scheme to overturn Michigan’s vote in favor of Trump.
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