Donald Trump has a certain instinct for organized crime. It’s how his own former lawyer described Trump’s business management. So maybe it’s not a surprise that he runs right to RICO whenever he wants to throw a tantrum in court. He invoked the statute in his loony lawsuit against every Democrat in D.C. and, as the T-shirt would say, “all I got was this lousy $1 million sanction for filing a frivolous suit.”
But that was when he sat on the civilian side of the ledger. Now that he’s converted the Department of Justice into his personal grievance clearing house, he has the benefit of sending taxpayer-funded lawyers into court… to file frivolous cases.
Last week, Trump went to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab with Vice President JD Vance, Acting Archivist Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Not-the-Department-of-War Pete Hegseth. While at dinner, activist group Code Pink heckled the group. In response, the gathering of hardcore alpha males went crying to Pam Bondi to protect them from the scary women hurting their feelings.
“I’ve asked [Bondi] to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases,” Trump said. “They should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive.” Which is a Yelp review, not RICO.
In a sane administration, this is where the adults in the room step in to tell the increasingly obvious sundowning president that, no, in fact protesters are not a racketeering operation. But here in Trump II: Electric Boogaloo, every official scrambles to the nearest cable news hit to rubberstamp whatever baseless theory comes out of the Oval Office, so Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche ran to CNN for some banana republic cosplay about the boss’s brilliant suggestion that a handful of women disrupting dinner amounts to a criminal conspiracy.
Now we turn it over to Ken White, who responds to stupid efforts to use the RICO statute like Bruce Wayne catching a glimpse of the Bat-Signal:
As Kaitlan Collins correctly sets up the topic, Todd Blanche is arguing that a statute designed to dismantle the Gambino Crime Family and take on Al Qaeda and direct it at the notorious criminal enterprise of *checks notes* the Ladies Who Lunch.
Blanche, to his enduring professional detriment, continued:
“So is it, again, sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, DC, and accost him with vile words and vile anger? And meanwhile, he’s simply trying to have dinner. Does it mean it’s just completely random that they showed up? Maybe,” Blanche said on “The Source.” “But to the extent that it’s part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States, there’s potential, potential investigations there.”
No, there are not.
They showed up because Trump was there, and they yelled at him. While we’re at it what does “accost him with vile words and vile anger” mean? Where does it fit on a protest scale relative to “storming the Capitol and trying to beat cops to death with fire extinguishers?” Because apparently that’s the basis of a full pardon, so we really need to nail down where this veers into organized crime.
RICO requires, in a nutshell, racketeering activity and an enterprise carrying it out. Blanche suggests that there’s some mass conspiracy — probably directed by George Soros, since everything is with these people — to send protesters wherever the president goes. The problem, as White’s post notes, is that even if that fever dream enterprise existed, there’s no racketeering! Because the predicate acts for RICO are a relatively small list of specific crimes like murder and arson. Hurting the president’s fee-fees, it will shock you not at all, does not make the list.
This is the kind of legal theory that would embarrass a 1L. It’s something for your dumbest relative to post before ending up on Bad Legal Takes.
Pressed by Collins on whether the protesters were inflicting harm by shouting at the president, Blanche said, “I mean, honestly, so you’re asking whether there’s damage done by four individuals screaming and yelling at the president of our United States while he’s trying to have dinner? That can’t be a serious question.”
It shouldn’t be a serious question, but not for the reasons Blanche is going for here.
Blanche knows this is garbage too. That’s why he couches it in lawyerly “potential” and “maybe,” so he can gaslight disciplinary counsel later while Trump claps like a seal watching clips on Fox & Friends. On a transcript, divorced of tone, Blanche’s response here looks like he’s not saying something insane. Good luck on the plausible deniability.
No judge is going for this. Frankly, no D.C. grand jury is going for this. These are the same people returning no bills on far more colorable cases than this RICO clown show. It’s just cable Kabuki, a farce played out to make Trump feel like he made a smart suggestion before the DOJ quietly drops it.
But that’s still a problem. The media needs to stop indulging this nonsense. They don’t have to invite administration officials on to make up stuff. After Trump spouted off about RICO, there’s no obligation to bring Blanche on to explain it. What’s he going to do? He’s not going to tell the emperor he’s got no clothes. And so we spin out this stupid idea for another news cycle.
When Justice Sotomayor wonders whatever happened to civic education, the media’s compulsion to platform stupid legal arguments is part of it.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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