Donald Trump has a brand new lawyer. Considering that the previous president is at present dealing with indictments in three states in addition to Washington, DC, that’s not shocking. What is notable is who he hired: Steve Sadow, the legal professional who not too long ago defended Gunna, the Atlanta rap star.

Gunna was dealing with racketeering costs alongside the hip-hop crew Young Slime Life, or YSL. His case ended final December with an “Alford plea,” a deal that allowed him to keep up his innocence whereas accepting a responsible verdict and group service. Cases in opposition to different YSL members, particularly Gunna’s mentor Young Thug, are ongoing. All contain allegations that YSL, slightly than being a rap group, is a prison group.

Trump’s case in Georgia, the newest of his indictments and the one for which he employed Sadow, can be one which alleges he was a part of a prison group. Like Gunna and the 27 different folks indicted by Fulton County district legal professional Fani Willis within the YSL case, Trump and his 18 codefendants—together with his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of workers Mark Meadows—are being charged, additionally by Willis, with violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. They’ve all pleaded not guilty. The Trump and YSL circumstances each promise to be lengthy, drawn-out affairs difficult by lawyer wrangling, a number of motions, and the usage of social media as a type of proof.

Prosecutors usually use RICO as a result of it makes life simpler. Under the act, they don’t essentially must show {that a} defendant has dedicated a prison act, solely that they related to criminals who did. Willis has known as herself a “fan of RICO” as a result of it “allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.” In the case of Trump, that story got here within the type of a 98-page indictment with 40 non-racketeering costs and one large RICO cost tying all of them collectively.

Within that giant racketeering cost are acts that the prosecution claims display Trump and his cohort “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the [2020] election.” Like the RICO case in opposition to YSL, a number of of these acts—13 of the 161 complete—contain the usage of social media. For members of YSL, these acts embody showing in Instagram posts making explicit hand indicators. For Trump, they embody issues like tweeting “People in Georgia got caught cold bringing in massive numbers of ballots and putting them in voting machines.” Both circumstances present how prosecutors use social media to construct RICO circumstances, and the outcomes of each might be high-profile examples of whether or not or not such techniques work.

When most individuals who comply with US authorized circumstances hear “RICO” they suppose “mafia.” That’s as a result of the unique federal racketeering act, which lawmakers handed in 1970, was meant to crack down on organized crime. Georgia’s model of RICO is “much more loosey-goosey,” says Ken White, a former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney. For instance, almost a decade in the past prosecutors in Cherokee County, Georgia, brought RICO charges against three court docket reporters. Court reporters cost per web page; the crime these court docket reporters had dedicated was altering the margins on their transcripts. Georgia’s legal professional normal, Chris Carr, is now bringing a RICO prosecution in opposition to 61 activists who protested the development of a police coaching facility, the so-called “Cop City,” exterior Atlanta.