So far, Donald Trump has escaped being held accountable for the racist threats and abuse suffered by a pair of Georgia poll workers as a result of his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
That should soon change.
The wrongs inflicted on Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss are part of the federal conspiracy and obstruction case against Trump.
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And the two resolutely decent public servants are also named as victims in the state RICO indictment brought against Trump and 18 co-conspirators by Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis.
“Members of the enterprise, including several of the Defendants, falsely accused Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman of committing election crimes in Fulton County, Georgia,” the indictment reads. “These false accusations were repeated to Georgia legislators and other Georgia officials in an effort to persuade them to unlawfully change the outcome of the November 3,2020, presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.”
A measure of how jurors in the criminal cases might respond to the pair came last week after they tearfully testified in a civil defamation suit they brought against Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani. The jury ordered Giuliani to pay $148 million in damages.
In the criminal cases, the stakes will be one thing that even Trump dreads more than losing money: prison. And in the view of a prominent Georgia defense lawyer turned law professor, the mother/daughter duo will make the RICO case against Trump stronger just by being there.
“When you've got election workers who live here and they've got faces, then that makes it much more real to a jury,” Michael Mears of John Marshall Law School told The Daily Beast on Monday.
As the alleged leader of a criminal enterprise in Georgia, Trump would be held liable for whatever the participants do in furthering it. Mears noted that in prosecuting 35 teachers and administrators for cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta public schools in 2014, Willis was also able to indict the superintendent even though she had not actively participated in the scheme.
“If you can do that with the superintendent who's not even got her actual hands in it, that's pretty good prosecuting,” Mears said.
He added, “If you're charged with the RICO statute in Georgia, you better get a good lawyer because it's gonna be tough to beat.”
In the test-cheating case all but one of the defendants who went to trial were convicted. Two were sentenced to 20 years; another got seven years; three others got five years.
“The superintendent unfortunately died before she got to trial,” Mears recalled.
That’s probably the only way Trump could duck this RICO case. And, along with everything else, Willis has ample evidence that Trump knowingly victimized Freeman and Moss.
For instance, there are numerous social media postings. Trump referred to Freeman 18 times during the Jan 2, 2021, recorded phone call in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes. Trump subsequently vilified the pair online, at one point calling Freeman “evil.”
That is only a small part of a sprawling RICO case. Georgia law says that RICO defendants can be charged with an offense furthering a criminal enterprise even if it is committed outside the state.
“So you can commit a crime as part of the corrupt organization in Arizona or Pennsylvania, and it could be used to prosecute you here in Georgia whether you were ever even in Georgia or not,” Mears said. “That's how expansive this RICIO statute is here.”
Should Trump be convicted, he will face a minimum of five years in prison, a fine or both. Should he avoid prison, that would mean teachers who cheated on a standardized test will have been hit harder than someone who put the whole democracy at risk while trying to upend a presidential election.
Should Trump land in a Georgia prison, he will be beyond the reach of a presidential pardon, even if he has again assumed office. And he will have to serve the five-year minimum before he can be considered for a state pardon. That can be granted only by the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, not the governor.
Four of the lesser defendants have copped pleas and agreed to testify for the state, making Wills’ case even stronger. Willis has said she will not offer pleas to Trump, Giuliani or former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Meadows is so afraid of being held accountable in Georgia that he has been fighting desperately to get his case moved to federal court. A federal appeals court turned him down on Monday. He seems likely to be sitting with Trump and Giuliani in a case where a mother and daughter will give jurors faces to think of as they deliberate their verdict.
