Mandatory minimum
Interesting. Prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers in an opinion piece at CNN:
RICO also carries sentencing benefits. A conviction under Georgia’s RICO law would carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years, and most of the other 40 charges in the indictment likewise involve mandatory minimum sentences of one year.
None of the other charged cases include a mandatory minimum, upping the stakes for a Georgia conviction not only for Trump, but his co-conspirators, who will be deciding in the coming weeks and months whether they want to take a plea deal that might help them avoid this consequence by allowing them to plead to a count without mandatory minimum penalties.
Here’s hoping they all abandon him, every last one of them.
And I suspect it is constitutionally impossible for Trump to plead guilty to anything. (I mean Trump’s constitution, not Georgia’s.) He always assumes he will beat any charge. Things have always gone his way, and the 2020 election is a great example of how he acts on the occasions when things don’t go his way.
The latest Serious episode from Ken White and Josh Barrow discusses the Georgia indictment at length. They have a guest – Georgia lawyer Andrew Fleischman. Together than discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the case. tl;dr – there are some really meaty and dangerous charges for Trump, but the indictment as a whole appears bloated and risky for a prosecutor seeking a quick trial. Could/possibly should have been trimmed back and simplified. Biggest risk appears to be that they are going after, or at least using, what appears to be very clearly protected 1A speech, instead of acknowledging that and setting it to one side as Jack Smith did.