Front Burner - Rudy Giuliani: from RICO prosecutor to RICO defendant

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

This week, Donald Trump and 18 of his associates were charged under the state of Georgia’s RICO Act. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, and it was originally designed to crack down on organized crime. And while Trump’s at the center of these latest charges, a lot of the heat is also on his former attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor of New York made his name in the 80s as a federal prosecutor for using the RICO act to take down the city’s mob. So how did this tough-on-crime anti-mafia crusader end up being charged with a legal tool he himself pioneered? Today on Front Burner, VICE News reporter Greg Walters on what led Giuliani to this point, and what these charges in Georgia could mean for his future. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. Specifically, the indictment brings felony charges against Donald John Trump, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, John Charles Eastman. So this week, Donald Trump and 18 of his associates were charged under the state of Georgia's RICO Act. Overnight, a sweeping indictment in Georgia.

The DA alleges a series of acts designed to further the criminal enterprise, including a fake elector scheme, breach of voting machines, and Mr. Trump's 2021 phone call, scheme, breach of voting machines, and Mr. Trump's 2021 phone call pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn President Biden's victory in Georgia. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, and it was created to crack down on organized crime. At this point, Trump and his associates are facing a lot of criminal charges, 91 across four jurisdictions. But these latest ones in Georgia are a big deal.

If they stick, the former U.S. president won't be able to pardon himself, even if he gets reelected. And while Trump is at the center of these latest charges in Georgia, a lot of the heat is also on his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani is a central figure in the alleged conspiracy, accused of making false claims of election fraud to a committee of the Georgia State Senate.

Giuliani is the former mayor of New York. Before that, he was a federal prosecutor and made a name for himself by using Rico to take down the mob. The mafia leaders were rounded up in an overnight sweep and today U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani announced the indictments. This is a great day for law enforcement, but this is a bad day, probably the worst for the mafia. So how did this tough-on-crime, anti-mafia crusader end up being charged with a legal tool that he himself pioneered.

Greg Walters is a reporter with Vice News who's been following the charges. He's on the show today to take us through Rudy Giuliani's journey and what these charges in Georgia could mean for him. Hi, Greg. Thanks so much for doing this. Hi, thanks for having me. So Donald Trump and 18 others, including Rudy Giuliani, have been hit with these charges under something called RICO in the state of Georgia and this latest indictment. And before we get into the specifics, what exactly is RICO? Yeah. So RICO is kind of a legendary law in America. It's this law that was passed at the federal level in 1970 to go after the mob. And since then, it's become almost like a bit of a

punchline among lawyers and legal experts in the US because, you know, people always kind of say they think maybe it's RICO, but it's never RICO. So, you know, the joke is like, oh, I think I got this guy in RICO. It's like, no, no, you didn't. So it is very complex. It's this sprawling legal law that is very powerful if used right, but has a lot of requirements. law that is very powerful if used right, but has a lot of requirements. But the fundamental way to understand it is that it's a way to put a group of people together who are involved in a group that has carried out a bunch of crimes, which are called predicate acts. And if they've done enough of these individual predicate acts in just the right way, you can kind of loop it all together into one big group and brand them a

criminal enterprise and hit them with RICO, which comes with very serious charges. After the law was passed in 1970 at the federal level, some states followed up with their own version, including Georgia in the 1980s. And the Georgia law happens to be a lot simpler and easier to use than the federal version. So it is the signature move of the Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, who has brought this case against Trump and his allies. And it's one that she likes to bring a lot. Every individual charged in the indictment is charged with one count of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to seize the presidential term of office beginning on. Yeah, I know she's used it a lot in the past and that it's been a little bit controversial.

Right. And I wonder if you could tell me why. Why has she been criticized for the way that she's used it a lot in the past and that it's been a little bit controversial, right? And I wonder if you could tell me why. Why has she been criticized for the way that she's used it? Yeah, she's a big fan of using Rico. She likes to use it because it lets her bring in a lot of different things into the case. It lets her tell a story, she says. That's her version of why she likes it. A big story for the jury. But she's used it in some unconventional ways.

She's used it against a lot of famous rappers, or some famous rappers anyway, in Georgia, which Atlanta is one of the big hip-hop capitals of America. And she has used the law, for example, against Young Thug and YSL. But even more infamously, she used it against a group of teachers in Atlanta who were accused of helping their students cheat illegally. Now to the school cheating scandal that is gripping the city of Atlanta. A former superintendent and 34 of her employees accused of an elaborate scheme to fake test scores. The same teachers and school administrators who were bragging just a few years ago about double digit improvements in standardized test results now charged with racketeering,

theft and false statements. The indictments read like a rap on the mob. So it put her in the position of arguing that a group of teachers should be prosecuted using a law that was originally designed to take down the mafia. And a lot of people had a lot of criticisms for that, but she's stuck by her guns and she has not apologized. Right. And so now she's using it against a former president and his associates. And why is something that's normally used for organized crime now being used in this context? used for organized crime now being used in this context? Basically, the prosecutor in question, this is her favorite tool for using this.

And in this case, it appears to be one that she really thinks is applicable to the situation. You have a sprawling, she would say, attempt to illegally flip the election that involves a lot of different actions in a lot of different areas and places, even states outside Georgia, which are detailed extensively in this indictment. And she seems to feel that this fits the bill, even though it is a somewhat creative, some people might say novel way of using it. That's certainly what Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is saying about her use of RICO, which is, of course, interesting because he was famous for using the law himself. Yeah, yeah. And we'll get into that in just a second. But what is Rudy Giuliani being accused of specifically? He is accused of essentially being Trump's kind of ringleader for this scheme, for helping Trump try to reverse this, his loss in Georgia.

You know, he is specifically charged with making unsupported allegations about widespread election fraud in Georgia, in front of the legislature in Georgia, essentially making false claims. He's accused of being involved in a plan to send 16 so-called fake electors from Georgia to Congress to swear that Trump won when he really didn't. He's accused of being part of a conspiracy to commit forgery. And so when you put all those together, they become constituent acts to the bigger RICO case, which comes with potentially five to 20 years. And how has Giuliani responded to these charges? Well, he's forcefully denied any wrongdoing and essentially said he was simply being a lawyer for his boss. And he is absolutely denying any wrongdoing.

Like you mentioned, the charges against Rudy Giuliani have gotten a lot of attention this week because there is kind of an irony to Rico being used against the person who actually pioneered how this law is used. And I wanted to spend a bit of time exploring that and how Rudy Giuliani went from being a celebrated federal prosecutor in the 1980s to the situation that he finds himself in now. So he first used Rico against the mob in New York. And I wonder if you could take me back to that time and how did he use Rico back then? Yeah, that's right. There's just been a remarkable decline for Rudy Giuliani. Yeah, that's right. There's just been a remarkable decline for Rudy Giuliani. And I think that very little symbolizes it so perfectly as the bookends of the way that he has reversed his position on this particular criminal statute. He went from using it against other people to now having it used against himself. The mirror image is basically perfect. So back then, what happened is that when the law was passed at the federal level in 1970, it wasn't much used at the time.

It sort of sat there on the books for a while. But Giuliani was appointed to be the top federal prosecutor in New York City, in the Southern District of New York, which is legendary in American law circles as being essentially the first among, they're supposed to be equal, but really SDNY is the most aggressive, the most prominent group office of prosecutors in America. It's Manhattan, it's New York City, It's the heart of the country. And he was the top prosecutor there. And he used this law, dusted it off, took a lot of credit for reinventing it, and got a lot of credit for reinventing it, against the heads of the five mafia families

in New York. They are said to run the most powerful crime families in New York, in fact, in the nation. And according to the government, they make up the commission, the ruling body of a potent criminal enterprise dealing in drugs and extortion, loan sharking, labor racketeering, and murder. The mafia leaders were rounded up in an overnight sweep, and today, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani announced the indictments. He brought them in this audacious action that essentially decapitated the mob in New York City in one go and continued to use RICO against other high profile defendants in the financial world. So he became known for cleaning up the streets of New York, Wall Street, and also the mob. Serving as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989,

Rudy Giuliani spearheaded the effort to throw drug dealers into jail, fight organized crime, break the web of corruption in city government, and prosecute white-collar criminals for insider trading, tax evasion, and other crimes. And really, it won him a lot of press and adulation, and eventually won him the mayorship of New York City. I wonder if you can talk about what happened sort of after he won this case. I understand it was a really, really big deal because the mob was so powerful in New York at the time. And he reveled in this success, right?

How did he use that success to get to the mayorship in New York ultimately? Yeah, basically he put himself out there as being the law and order guy for New York City. I mean, I think is a basic way to say this. First as the top federal prosecutor and then as the mayor. but his theme was I'm cleaning up New York city, New York city hadn't had a Republican mayor in decades, uh, until he came along. And I think it's fair to say that around the time of his being the mayor crime fell precipitously in New York. New York is a much safer city today than it used to be. Now, there's a debate over how much credit he really deserves for that. But he used his reputation

as a tough crime-fighting prosecutor to turn himself into a tough crime-fighting mayor and instituted what became known as the broken windows theory, where you try to prosecute even small crimes as if they were large, important ones, with the idea being that if someone's afraid to cross to jaywalk, they're going to be afraid to rob a bank, I guess is how that's supposed to go. So they took this strategy and New York became a safer place. So there are arguments about whether or not he deserves the credit for that, whether there were other factors. Other cities also became much safer.

America generally became safer over that time. But in any case, he used that to really burnish his reputation and to earn a national profile. Ladies and gentlemen, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Great to be here hosting Saturday Night Live. Some people said this could be a big risk for me. Prosecuting the mob is risky. After all, tonight, if I'm not good, you know, what are they going to do, blow up my car? And then 9-11 happened, and he really kind of rose to the occasion, reassuring people in New York. He ended up being Times Person of the Year in 2001, I think.

For every single person touched by this unthinkable tragedy, there's been one man who, above all others, has been the beacon holding this city together and leading it forward. He's the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani. This is a better city now than it was before the attack took place in terms of its spirituality and its understanding of what it means to be an American, its understanding of unity. So how did he go from being the celebrated mayor, America's mayor, as he was called, to becoming so deeply embedded in the Trump universe and becoming his right hand man? Their lives have been kind of intertwined since the 1980s, right? Yeah, that's right. I

mean, they knew each other. They were at the top of New York society at about the same time. other. They were at the top of New York society at about the same time. A couple of famous guys going around doing rich, famous guy stuff in New York together, or at least in the same circles. They get each other. These are two guys who come from the same background and the same place, and they have that level of understanding and kinship. After 9-11, Giuliani's trajectory was at its peak. I mean, he was at one point considered a frontrunner, if not the frontrunner, to win the GOP nomination in the election. And he fought hard for it and ultimately flamed out. He put all his eggs in the Florida basket, but Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani came up way short here in the Sunshine State. Now, NBC News is confirming

what we have been reporting, that Rudy Giuliani is dropping out of the Republican race and will endorse John McCain for president. And that was a really hard place for him to be, by all accounts. His ex-wife, Judith, talks about him falling into a depression and beginning to abuse alcohol and to not be able to get out of bed for days at a time. So interestingly, at around that time, they decided as a couple to go down to Florida for a while to try to help him recover. And they go to Palm Beach. He seemed to be so depressed that she began to be worried about the press finding them and seeing him in this depressed state. So they reached around for a place for him

to hide out from the press and they found Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach mansion that he bought, which has a lot of underground passageways basically from the Korean War era. And they found a place for him to hide in a house across the street from Mar-a-Lago and travel back and forth underneath as he was going through this process of being incredibly depressed and drinking a lot and attempting to pull himself out of it. And it was a moment when he took shelter with Donald Trump that, you know, may

have, may account for some of the loyalty that he has shown over the years to Donald Trump when they met each other at this time. But it's also a metaphor for the way that Giuliani just essentially latched on to Trump later on in life and used it to try to reinvent himself and to return to the spotlight. And if you ask Giuliani's ex-wife, Judith Giuliani, the hardest part for him at that time was feeling like he was falling into irrelevance, that he's just a politician with a need for this affirmation from the public. And he felt that he was simply on the way out to being a footnote to history, and that he decided to rejoin Trump's orbit, essentially as his long-shot bid to regain that relevance that was so vital to him,

and has gone on to pay an enormous price for making those decisions. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. Essentially, what we've talked through is this real fall from grace for him. I know he's been suspended from practicing law in New York and Washington.

And this, what's happening now, this is just the latest in the string of legal threats that Giuliani's facing, right? The last year has been pretty rough for him. Rough is one way to put it. Unbelievable might be another one. I mean, he is unindicted co-conspirator number one in the federal case against Trump and could be elevated to an indicted co-conspirator at any time. He has to live under that. He's being sued by the companies that ran the 2020 election for defamation for astronomical sums of money. He's being sued by the women who were election workers in Georgia for defamation. These are the ones he said were passing around a thumb drive as if it were a drug deal. It turns

out it was a ginger mint. He's being sued by a young woman who used to work for him, who recently released transcripts of tapes of him using just heinous, racist, filthy language. You know, he has apparently been stiffed even by Trump himself for the work that he did that got them all into so much trouble. He supposedly had a $20,000 a day handshake deal with Trump to work on the election case. And Trump and his allies went on to raise a quarter of a billion dollars for these legal efforts, supposedly, and didn't really want to pay Giuliani for the work that he did. At one point, his ex-wife, Judith giuliani her lawyers were essentially trying to have him thrown in jail temporarily while he uh was being accused of not abiding by the terms of his divorce settlement

he managed to get out of that that's been resolved but his his legal uh situation is catastrophic by any standard and the only person I think who could be said to have the kind of legal problems that Rudy has or have problems that exceed his are Trump himself. What do you think Rudy Giuliani's strategy might be moving forward in this particular legal process? It's a little hard to say. I mean, Giuliani has managed to skip through, despite all this amazing legal trouble, he's never been charged with a crime before that I know of. So this will be a slightly new position for him. But so far, he certainly is showing no sign of backing down. He's showing no sign that he might consider cooperating against Trump. He's suggesting that he's going to fight this to the end. I mean, he is 79 years old. You could easily imagine a sentence in this case being a life sentence for him.

Also, it's important to note that the Georgia case, even if Trump wins the presidency, Trump would have the ability theoretically to pardon people charged with federal crimes. But these are state crimes. And the president doesn't even have the power to do that. So it's hard to see that he has a good way out of this situation, except perhaps to go down fighting. And it appears to be at the moment, that's what he's preparing to do. So Greg, you've been writing about this. And I wonder just if I could get your final thoughts on this story, given everything that we've talked about, what do you make of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is the guy who pioneered Rico and the way that it's used and the fact that Rudy Giuliani is the guy who pioneered RICO and the way that it's used and

the fact that he's ended up being on the receiving end of it. You know, it's really just this amazing tragedy. He is going down on his own sword. He reached the pinnacle of American life. Essentially, he was one step away from, well, maybe more than one step, but a few steps away from being the president of the United States, his own lifelong dream. And right at that moment, he fell from grace. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. And it's a little bit like Rudy Giuliani set out to prove that wrong and is paying an enormous price for the attempt. Okay, Greg, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Hey, thank you. All right, that's all for today. I'm Tamara Kendacker.

Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.