How the mighty have fallen. On Monday, Rudy Giuliani’s fall from grace got another step deeper. Once he was “America’s Mayor.” Two decades later he was reputation–torching joke who repeatedly humiliated himself for a guy who might throw him under the bus. He also now has an indictment under his belt. To make matters worse, the charges fall under the same laws he helped make popular in his younger days.
As per Newsweek, Giuliani and the 18 others indicted by Fulton County, Georgia DA Dani Willis are facing charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Jump back to the early-to-late-‘80s and Giuliani, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was praised for using the same laws against the state’s most prominent mafia bosses, who ruled over the “Five Families.”
“I dreamed up the tactic of using the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to prosecute the Mafia leadership,” Giuliani bragged in his 2002 memoir Leadership.
What’s more, he had harsh words for those charged under RICO laws. “Organized crime figures are illegitimate people who would go on being illegitimate people if I got them off,” he told The New York Times in 1985. “I would not want to spend a lot of time with them, shake hands with them, have sidebar conferences with them and become involved with people who are close to totally evil.”
Jump to the present day, and Giuliani has been charged with 13 counts under RICO laws, including violation of oath by public officer, making false statements, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, and conspiracy to commit forgery. And like him, the DA prosecuting him has a history of prosecuting RICO cases. As if the poor guy didn’t have it bad already.
(Via Newsweek)