Why was RICO, a mafia-targeting act, used to charge Donald Trump? posted at 11:10:01 UTC via economist.com T HE MAFIA , a sex cult and several titans of Wall Street have all been brought down by America’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations ( RICO ) Act, a legal tool designed to tackle organised crime. Now a version of it could be used to nail a former president after a grand jury in Georgia indicted Donald Trump , along with 18 of his associates, on August 14th. What are RICO charges and how might they apply to Mr Trump? Congress first passed the legislation in 1970 while trying to target the Italian-American mafia. In America, you cannot be prosecuted for simply being a mobster; that constitutes a “status crime”, and the Eighth Amendment protects against it. And, as anyone who has seen “The Godfather” knows, the more powerful a crime boss is, the less likely they are to be the one actually getting their hands dirty. To get around this problem, lawmakers developed R
