Last
Tuesday,
Donald
Trump
sauntered
into
Joe’s
Seafood
in
occupied
Washington,
DC,
presumably
to
order
the
chain’s
$83
filet
mignon
extra-well
done
and
drenched
in
ketchup.
For
about
forty-five
seconds,
the
Dear
Leader
also
received
a
complimentary
amuse
bouche
in
the
form
of
a
handful
of
Code
Pink
protestors
chanting
“Free
DC,
free
Palestine,
Trump
is
the
Hitler
of
our
time.”
Catchy!
The
restaurant
promptly
escorted
the
protestors
off
of
the
premises,
which
it
had
every
right
to
do.
Although
perhaps
the
franchise
owners
might
have
reacted
differently
had
they
chatted
with
Stephanie
Wilkinson
first.
Wilkinson,
who
famously
tossed
then-White
House
press
secretary
Sarah
Huckabee
Sanders
out
of
her
restaurant
the
Red
Hen
back
in
2018,
says
that
standing
up
to
Trump
was
“great
for
business.”
After
Trump
trolls
flooded
the
Red
Hen
with
thousands
of
one-star
Yelp
reviews,
she
worried
she’d
go
woke,
go
broke.
But
actual
diners
voted
with
their
wallets,
and
Wilkinson
actually
grew
her
restaurant,
which
is
now
called
“Zunzun.”
“Resistance
is
not
futile,
for
you
or
your
business,”
she
says.
Joe’s
chose
Trump’s
corpulent
maw
instead
and
showed
the
nice
Code
Pink
ladies
the
door.
But
whatever
the
restaurant
served
up
failed
to
quiet
the
colicky
leader,
and
soon
he
was
frothing
at
the
mouth
about
prosecuting
“paid
agitators.”
“I’m
doing
a
great
job
for
peace
in
the
Middle
East.
I
should
get
a
lot
of
awards
for
that,
with
the
Abraham
Accords
and
everything
else,”
he
whined.
“But
a
woman
just
stood
up
and
started
screaming,
and
she
got
booed
out
of
the
place,
too.”
“She
was
a
paid
agitator,
and
you
have
a
lot
of
them,
and
I’ve
asked
Pam”
—
meaning
Attorney
General
Pam
Bondi
—
to
look
into
that
in
terms
of
bringing
RICO
cases
against
them.
Criminal
RICO,”
he
went
on,
citing
no
evidence.
“They
should
be
put
in
jail,
what
they’re
doing
to
this
country
is
really
subversive.”
And
so
Pam
dutifully
scurried
off
to
figure
out
how
to
charge
First
Amendment
protected
speech
under
the
Racketeer
Influenced
and
Corrupt
Organizations
Act
of
1970.
Luckily
she
had
her
trusty
sidekick
Todd
Blanche
to
help
out.
The
Deputy
Attorney
General,
who
was
an
actual
federal
prosecutor
at
the
Southern
District
of
New
York,
was
dispatched
to
explain
to
CNN’s
Kaitlan
Collins
that
“to
the
extent”
those
forty-five
seconds
of
chanting
were
“part
of
an
organized
effort
to
inflict
harm,
and
terror,
and
damage,
on
the
United
States,”
it
might
be
RICO.
Todd
Blanche
knows
damn
well
it’s
not
RICO.
RICO
Suave
Trump
and
Blanche
suggest
that
anyone
who
disagrees
with
the
administration
must
be
secretly
bankrolled
by
unknown
(((wink,
wink)))
funders.
But
even
if
George
Soros
were
paying
each
and
every
member
of
Code
Pink
to
go
hang
out
in
DC-area
restaurants
shouting,
it
wouldn’t
be
a
crime.
And
it’s
doubly
not
RICO.
The
RICO
statute,
in
and
of
itself,
doesn’t
criminalize
anything,
least
of
all
yelling
at
the
President.
Instead,
it
enhances
criminal
and
civil
penalties
when
an
organization
invests
in
or
otherwise
participates
in
multiple
existing
crimes
known
as
“predicate
offenses.”
The
paradigmatic
RICO
case
involved
the
Gambino
crime
family,
where
low-level
muscle
did
the
bosses’
dirty
work.
RICO
lets
prosecutors
go
after
the
entire
org
chart,
no
matter
who
actually
pulled
the
trigger.
The
Department
of
Justice
manual
notes
that
the
“purpose
of
the
RICO
statute
is
the
elimination
of
the
infiltration
of
organized
crime
and
racketeering
into
legitimate
organizations
operating
in
interstate
commerce.”
And
although
Blanche
is
technically
correct
that
RICO
may
apply
to
any
organization
that
funds
such
predicate
offenses,
unless
your
hirelings
have
engaged
in
“a
pattern”
of
such
offenses,
it’s
not
RICO.
The
statute
(18
U.S.C.
§
1961)
lists
35
separate
predicate
offenses.
That
list
includes
the
sorts
of
things
you
would
expect
the
mafia
to
do,
like
murder,
kidnapping,
gambling,
arson,
robbery,
bribery,
extortion,
drug
dealing,
money
laundering,
counterfeiting,
and
embezzlement.
It
does
not
(yet)
include
“slightly
annoying
the
thin-skinned
President
of
the
United
States
for
less
than
a
minute.”
Apparently,
Blanche
thinks
Code
Pink’s
protest
could
be
characterized
as
some
kind
of
terrorism.
But
not
even
all
forms
of
terrorism
qualify
as
RICO
predicate
offenses.
Only
international
acts
of
terrorism,
defined
as
“conduct
transcending
national
boundaries,”
fall
within
the
ambit
of
the
statute.
So
even
if
Code
Pink
hatched
a
plot
to
spoil
Trump’s
dinner
from
Buckingham
Palace,
it
still
wouldn’t
be
RICO,
since
an
isolated
event
is
not
a
“pattern
of
racketeering
activity.”
And
a
pattern
of
saying
the
president
is
“the
Hitler
of
our
time”
isn’t
gonna
do
it.
(Which
is
a
lucky
thing
for
JD
Vance.)
If
you’ve
got
a
problem,
Ted
can
make
it
worse
But
while
it’s
fun
to
make
fun
of
Todd
and
Pam,
their
lies
about
the
law
can’t
be
divorced
from
context.
The
administration
is
vowing
to
crack
down
on
left-wing
organizations,
and
Trump’s
less-stupid
allies,
like
Senator
Ted
Cruz,
have
proposed
a
Stop
FUNDERs
Act,
an
acronym
for
“Financial
Underwriting
of
Nefarious
Demonstrations
and
Extremist
Riots.”
Cruz’s
bill
would
amend
18
U.S.C.
§
1961’s
list
of
predicate
RICO
offenses
to
add
criminal
rioting,
defined
as
a
public
disturbance
involving
acts
of
violence.
Which…
is
not
the
sort
of
thing
one
typically
associates
with
racketeering.
The
Senate
isn’t
going
to
pass
Cruz’s
bill,
perhaps
because
they
realize
it
would
have
made
criminals
out
of
the
president’s
allies
who
paid
for
buses
to
transport
his
supporters
to
DC
on
January
6.
And
even
if
Cruz’s
doomed
statute
were
codified,
it
still
wouldn’t
apply
to
Code
Pink’s
heckling.
But
all
the
hilarious
bumbling
and
mischaracterization
aside,
we
have
multiple
branches
of
the
federal
government
equate
dissent
with
terrorism
and
demanding
twenty-year
prison
sentences
for
critics
of
the
administration.
This
is
a
blatant
effort
to
criminalize
free
speech
and
intimidate
protesters.
And
that’s
not
funny
at
all.
Subscribe
to
read
more
at
Law
and
Chaos….
Andrew
Torrez
produces
the
Law
and
Chaos Substack and podcast.
You
can
subscribe
by
clicking
the
logo:
Earlier:
Todd
Blanche
Decides
Heckling
Donald
Trump
Is
Organized
Crime
Now