Hey, Republicans! It's Trump who "criminalized politics," by turning the GOP into a two-bit mafia ( www.salon.com )
It’s true that the list of 19 names Willis read out Monday night — "Jenna Ellis, “Sidney Powell,” “Robert Cheeley” — sounded more like the membership roster at a tony suburban golf club than like characters on “The Sopranos.” DeSantis and Giuliani are clearly leaning into stereotypes that frame “organized crime” as something that cannot possibly involve upper-crust white folks with Anglo-Saxon roots. Once upon a time, Rudy Giuliani decried “the unfair stereotype” that equated Italian-Americans with mobsters.
But what makes someone a part of a crime syndicate is their behavior, not the number of natural blondes in your 23andMe profile. If you actually reads Willis’ indictment, or even a decent summary, it becomes clear that she’s charging these people with “organized crime” because, well, they conspired with each other to commit a big crime, which is pretty much the definition. Yeah, the specific crime they tried to commit was stealing the Georgia election and, yeah, that was a “political” act. But in the eyes of the law, that’s about the same as saying that bank robbery is a form of “entrepreneurship.” Obscuring the motive by wrapping it in the flag doesn’t change the facts: Breaking the law to take something that isn’t yours is called stealing, and it’s a crime.
