Why a law used against the Mob is behind Georgia's prosecution of Donald Trump

There are 41 criminal counts in the nearly 100-page Georgia election interference indictment against former U.S. president Donald Trump and 18 others. And by the estimation of Morgan Cloud, a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, about 60 per cent is devoted to the first count: racketeering.

It's certainly the most serious charge, one that's often used to target members of organized crime groups — carrying with it a penalty of up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

It's also one of the intriguing aspects of Monday's indictment, the fourth against Trump, who is being accused of engaging in a criminal, racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia's presidential election result in 2020. It also includes 13 felony charges against the former Republican president.

Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman were among those charged.

The indictment cites a number of crimes that Trump or his associates allegedly committed, including falsely testifying to lawmakers that election fraud had occurred and urging state officials to violate their oaths of office by altering the election results.

It also mentions an alleged scheme to subvert the U.S. electoral process by submitting false slates of electors — people who make up the electoral college, which elects the president and vice-president. The indictment reaches across state lines, saying that Trump's advisers, including Giuliani and Meadows, advanced the conspiracy by calling officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere seeking to change the outcome in those states.

CBC News looks into the legal aspects of the case, the racketeering charge and the challenges faced by prosecutors.

"Any time you've got a scheme, a group of people who are committing multiple acts in furtherance of a conspiracy, Georgia RICO is going to be applicable in that situation," Christopher Timmons, an Atlanta trial lawyer and former prosecutor, said, referring to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

"It's a ridiculously broad statute,"he said.

For example, if someone in Georgia walks into a shopping mall store and steals a pair of socks, then walks into another store and steals another item, they could be charged with racketeering under RICO because that would be considered two crimes that are related to each other, Timmons said.

While RICO can be abused, in the Georgia election case, it's much more applicable, he said, because there are 19 people accused of engaging in the same conspiracy.

Racketeering is most associated with organized crime trials. Timmons said that in a traditional organized crime case, there may be one member who is accused of illegal gambling and another accused of illegal prostitution, where neither know each other but work for the same crime boss. Using RICO, both can be added to the same indictment.

"And we can talk about all the illegal gambling in the RICO case against the guy who's charged with prostitution and vice-versa," he said. "The scope of relevance in terms of evidence is much broader. And I think suddenly everything is relevant, nothing is inadmissible."

What does that mean for Trump?