and it can carry with it quite significant penalties. and so that is quite aggressive. it s an aggressive way to charge. fani willis and this office has a tremendous amount of experience in bringing racketeering cases. in unusual cases. the education case against teachers that felt very unexpected. hip-hop artists are still talking about what happened in georgia in terms of rico charges being brought against various artists. so she has familiarity using it in unorthodox ways. why do you think she decided to move in such a broad way with all these defendants in the same case, as opposed to focusing simply, as the special counsel did, on trump? yeah, there are some significant differences between the federal case and this georgia case. and that s one of them, the fact that she chose to name so many of the codefendants, the coconspirators. i think it strengthens her case from the perspective of she s really able to tell the story of the conspiracy, of the criminal
correlated individuals and schemes in which not every individual has to know what the other individual was doing. reporter: but using the statute has disadvantages too. the danger of using rico, it s more complicated. you ve got multiple defendants now. and that makes a harder case to prove. for the jury, it becomes much harder to follow. reporter: analysts say georgia s version of rico is not very different from the federal rico act, signed into law in 1970. it has been extremely successful. it has been a real hammer on a lot of different defendants. reporter: and one of the pioneers of using that rico statute in prosecutions now finds himself targeted by it. this election was a sham. reporter: former trump attorney rudy giuliani facing several rico-related charges in the georgia case. in the 1980s, serving as the top federal prosecutor in manhattan, giuliani was aggressive in using rico to take down the city s
met the boss. and yet they could all be indicted together. that s what this looks like. case in point, steven lee, minister from up around chicago, the indictment says he came down to atlanta to try to pressure election workers to admit to frauds that they had not committed. travon cutty. this was a former publicist for r. kelly and for ye, for kanye west. same accusation there. she says it s baloney, like many of them say it s baloney. but when you look at that big picture, you can see how the prosecutor s trying to say all these people had one goal, and they were all working toward it, and it was improper. tom foreman, thank you very much. for more perspective, former republican attorney general for the state of georgia, sam olens. thank you so much for joining us. the former president, donald trump, he s charged with leading a criminal conspiracy under georgia racketeering laws known as rico to try to overturn the
rico statute, a tactic that fani willis will use to try to connect the dots between donald trump and the other defendants. it has a storied track record in mafia cases. in the words she spoke participation in a criminal enterprise. reporter: and the words she wrote in her indictment of donald trump, like calling him and his associates a criminal organization fulton county d.a. fani willis made this georgia indictment seem like other famous prosecutions. the d.a. made very clear in her remarks that this was no different than a mafia rico conspiracy. reporter: the georgia rico law is what trump and his 18 codefendants in georgia are charged with violating as part of their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in that state. rico standing for racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations. experts say the advantage of rico is it allows several individuals to be tried together. it s a loose group of
most powerful dons. used it against the mafia commission. basically breaking up the five families. going after the bosses themselves. reporter: notorious, violent bosses like fat tony salerno, and carmine junior persico of the columbo family, among several organized crime figures indicted by rudy giuliani under rico. it s a very sad day to see somebody who was such a pioneer using this very statute to show how it can be used being on the receiving end of it right now. reporter: throughout this investigation, donald trump and his allies have vehemently denied any wrongdoing. rudy giuliani is calling the indictment in georgia an affront to american democracy and he says the real criminals are the people who have brought this case forward. brian todd reporting, thanks for that report. let s get more on trump s alleged coconspirators, including rudy giuliani. tom foreman is at the magic wall. rudy giuliani played a very