Why Georgia Charged Even Those at Very Bottom of the Chain of Command with Conspiracy

It’s an interesting question, why those in Trump’s Georgia conspiracy trial, who clearly would not have been those to concoct the scheme or hand out orders. were charged with conspiracy/racketeering. Even to the layman, clearly, the purpose of the racketeering charge is to be able to charge those who are at the top and therefore never raise a finger in an overtly criminal act. Makes perfect sense… the mob boss need only speak to his henchmen in hypotheticals to commit crimes of any magnitude.

So he is charged with racketeering, conspiring, RICO. Whatever.

But why charge the underlings — those who DID lift fingers to perform overtly criminal acts, and therefore can be clearly charged? Why charge them with various counts of conspiracy, in addition to their hands-on perpetrations of crime? After all, they didn’t organize anything. And no one higher up in the scheme was probably going to listen to any of their ideas, no matter how wonderfully corrupt they might have been. They didn’t conspire; they followed idiot marching orders. And as a side note for when other difficult-to-answer questions come up, please remember that these people, from top to bottom of the pyramid, are not merely stupid, they are probably pathologically stupid.

Imagine this scenario: an underling (Underling Number 1) in the indictment pyramid committed the ‘crime’ of simply unlocking a door to provide access for the hands-on criminals, such as to an office building, which in turn had another locked room with voting machines. Underling 1’s ‘crime’ might have been hardly chargeable, let alone convict-able. Now THAT’S a person who might justify the conspiracy charge in order to identify exactly what their offense was, and the prosecutors would have the burden of proving that U1 unlocked the door with nefarious intent… such as that they wanted to help find evidence of a stolen election.

But the individuals who entered the next room, the room with the voting machines, they committed an overt, clearly criminal act… long separated from the uber-boss who might have said “That’s a nice voting machine you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.” There’s no significance to charging them with conspiracy. They probably just did what someone else actually conspired to make occur. They probably didn’t conspire anything. They merely perspired a dumb, selfish, criminal act.

One might try to argue that doing so — charging everyone in the pyramid with conspiracy — strengthens the case against those who DID do the ideation and ordering. Or, as the indictment says, “solicit, request, and importune.” But I don’t buy that as the reason.

Quick Side Story About “solicit, request, and importune”

What the heck is that all about… every count mentioning those three words. Well, I thought about it and I can explain it. Although I suppose it’s in basic law school lectures.

Solicit means “go to the other party,” not just wait until you accidentally cross paths. If you wait until you see someone, and ask them to murder someone, you have made a “request” but you didn’t solicit them. Solicit means call them on an old-fashioned phone-y thing, or email them, or text them, or Slack them, or DM them. You get the idea.

“Request” means make the basic plea: please kill so-and-so. I asked nicely, so please do it.

But why “importune”? When was the last time you importuned someone, or worse, wrote about it? It means “heap it on,” urge them, goad them, tell them how important (get it?) it is, or maybe even threaten them (but in a polite, your-life-will-be-hell sort of way). Now you know. Apparently in legaldom, we break out three parts of telling your henchmen to kill someone; there’s A) getting in contact with them; B) telling them; C) sometimes even making a lengthy sales pitch.

But back to Georgia. They added conspiracy so they can take it away! So that, if and when a poor sap who is the most recent person whose life was ruined by this idiot, decides they don’t want to go to jail for simply being a gullible idiot… and they agree to tell the truth (wow, there’s an odd notion), the DA can say “We’ll withdraw the conspiracy charges if your truthful testimony identifies who instructed you to do what you did. And, if-and-when your testimony is successful in securing a conviction against those who instructed you, we’ll recommend to the judge the least possible jail time, possibly none, if we have that power.”