March 11, 2021

One of the things I remember from Michael Cohen's book is him saying that Trump never makes a direct order that could be considered criminal, that he speaks in code like Mafia types do. In light of the fact that Georgia's Fulton County DA Fani Willis just hired John Floyd (who literally wrote the law school textbook on racketeering cases) for the Georgia Trump case, I'd say the Other Guy has a very serious problem. This recording is just one more illustration of a pattern of corruption, which is exactly what you need to prove in a RICO case.

The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was passed in 1970 to help tie Mafia bosses to the crimes of their minions by arguing conspiracy in a “criminal enterprise.” Seems appropriate here!

Alysin Camerota introduced a segment on the recording of yet another Trump phone call released yesterday by the Wall Street Journal. "This is yet another phone call that he had with this time with Georgia's lead election investigators. This was in December. What does this one reveal?"

"This is the second phone call," CNN reporter Kara Scannell said.

"The first one we knew when the former president had reached out to Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and asked him to find the votes. This time, just a few days before Christmas, he reached out to the chief investigator in the Secretary of State's office, Frances Watkins and he asked her to find the fraud. He said something bad had happened and if she found it, she would be praised. Here's a portion of the recording that was appraised by the Wall Street Journal."

TRUMP: I won everything but Georgia. And I won Georgia by a lot. And the people know it. I mean, something happened. Something bad happened. And if you can get to Fulton, you are going to find things that will be unbelievable. Fulton is the mother lode, you know, as the expression goes.

WATKINS: I can assure you that our team, the GBI, we're only interested in the truth.

TRUMP: That's great.

WATKINS: And finding the information that's based on the facts.

TRUMP: It never made sense and they dropped ballots. They dropped all of these ballots. Stacey Abrams, really terrible. Just a terrible thing. And I will say this. When the right answer comes out, you'll be praised.

"Watson had told CNN affiliate WSV that she did not feel pressured by the call. We reached out to the former president for comment, but did not hear back."

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