AOC Thinks RICO Isn’t a Crime in Heated Exchange With Former Hunter Associate
So does that mean Trump and his co-defendants shouldn’t face charges in Georgia?
Laugh. Out. Loud.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act is a crime.
During a Biden impeachment hearing, the woman got into a heated exchange with Hunter Biden’s former associate, Tony Bobulinski. She couldn’t stand it when he tried to correct her because God forbid!
You guys. I cannot even with this person (emphasis mine):
OCASIO-COREZ: “Mr. Bobulinski, I — I heard your opening statement. It’s submitted to the record part of our proceedings. I have a quick question. Simple. Is it your testimony today that you personally witnessed President Joe Biden commit a crime?”
BOBULINSKI: “I believe the fact that he was sitting with me while I was putting together a business deal —”
OCASIO-COREZ: “Did you witness the president commit a crime? Is it your testimony today?”
BOBULINSKI: “Yes.”
OCASIO-COREZ: “And what crime? Do you — have you witnessed.”
BOBULINSKI: “How much time do I have to go through it?”
OCASIO-COREZ: “It is simple. You name the crime. Did you watch him steal something?”
BOBULINSKI: “Corruption statutes, RICO and conspiracy, FARA —”
OCASIO-COREZ: “What is it — what is — what is the crime, sir?”
BOBULINSKI: “You — you won’t —”
OCASIO-COREZ: “Specifically —”
BOBULINSKI: “You just — you keep — you asked me to answer the question. I answered the question.”
OCASIO-COREZ: “No. “
BOBULINSKI: “RICO, you’re obviously not familiar with. Corruption statutes.”
OCASIO-COREZ: “Excuse me, sir! “
BOBULINSKI: “FARA —”
OCASIO-COREZ: “Excuse me, sir! Excuse me, sir! RICO is not a crime. It is a category.”
Bobuilinski tried to correct her, “It’s a category of crimes that you are then charged under.”
Oh, man. I guess Trump and his co-defendants shouldn’t face any charges in Georgia.
Rep. AOC asks Tony Bobulinski to list the crimes he witnessed Joe Biden commit.
Tony Bobulinski lists the crimes: corruption statutes, RICO, conspiracy, FARA.
AOC then says RICO is not a crime.🤦
(HINT: RICO is a federal law codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-68) pic.twitter.com/HCNsSkgCjg
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) March 20, 2024
AOC broken in Hunter Biden hearing.
So broken in fact, she claims RICO isn’t a crime. Well… empty the jails!
Oh and for the record, all the defendants in the Georgia case brought by Fani Willis falls under RICO.
Ooops. pic.twitter.com/GGfoEazTSA
— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) March 20, 2024
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Comments
AOC sounded correct to me. You’re not charged with RICO, you’re charged using it. The corrupt part is where the crime is that see seeks to have explained.
Not really.
While the RICO statute gives specific crimes that people may commit, it is the unifying or organization of those crimes that creates a RICO violation.
It is akin to a baseball team in that you have players that do different things that may result in individual awards, but the team as a whole wins or loses.
With RICO, you may have different “players” breaking the law in difference and diverse ways, but the end goal of the group unifies the crimes under RICO.
The law was originally established to prosecute mobs and the mafia in that the mob’s minions would do the crime, but the mob’s leaders could not be prosecuted because although they directed the crimes to be done, they did not actually commit the crimes.
RICO allowed prosecutors to go after and convict (criminally and civilly) “bosses” whose directions of “smaller” crimes furthered a larger goal of illegal activity.
The answer she was given also included a general set of crimes. He mentioned “Corruption statutes”.
Yep. He was going to cite some of them but she shouted him down in her screechy, unhinged voice.
She was insisting on section and subsection number and badgering the witness for it. That’s unreasonable and unacceptable behavior by AOC.
No she was asking for a crime, like theft or bribery. RICO is a law under which you can be charged for a number of different crimes none of which have been demonstrated
No, a RICO violation is itself a crime. RICO is basically a fancy kind of conspiracy charge. Conspiracy is a crime; you can be charged with conspiracy even if the crime you conspired at was never actually committed. And the RICO Act targets a specific kind of conspiracy.
She spoke over Bobulinski as he was saying “FARA.”
RICO is an act to combat criminal acts associated with Racketeering, Influencing, and Corrupt Organizations.
AOC is wrong and her stupidity and pride won’t let her step back.
AOC is partly correct: it’s NOT a crime if your name happens to be “Biden.” I think that she forgot to mention that exclusion.
AOC should be a witness for the defense in Trump’s GA case
You’re all wrong. Rico is the handle of that notorious north side Chicago gangster, Caesar Enrico Bandello.
Rico, he wore a diamond, but that was thirty years ago…
But was he ‘Rico Suave’ like Gerardo?
There was also Rico Rossi. He was a sidekick for Elliot Ness in the 1950s TV show The untouchables.
(Sorry to hijack your article, Mary.)
This movie premiered today. I watched it. Very good. Well worth the time. https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/03/climate-the-movie-challenges-climate-crisis-pseudoscience/
It’s on demand on youtube. Well worth watching.
AOC & thinks should not be associated. There is no question that Omar is the dumbest member of congress, there are numerous runner ups, AOC a prime example.
As rhhardin says, RICO is not a crime; it’s a law. Likewise FARA is not a crime, it’s a law. He named the statutes he says he saw Biden violate, but she asked him to name the crimes. So he should have said something like “Violating RICO, violating FARA”, etc.
RICO is the racketeering part of a group of crimes. It is the crime of specified crimes for an larger, specific purpose.
While the crimes committed under the RICO statutes are individual statutes, the organization and racketeering part is a crime itself with separate (not enhanced – separate) penalties.
Surely you are arguing some antics.
Of course. Did I really have to include a smiley?!
Until the internet deploys a sarcasm font, yes you really have to.
His answer was more than that…’violations of RICO, corruption…..”. therein lies the crime
You are giving the legal term. When used COLLOQUIALLY, it describes a crime.
Stop playing semantics.
He wasn’t being colloquial, he was being abbreviated. I have never heard of anyone being described as having “committed RICO” or being “charged with RICO”. It’s always, always “RICO violations” or an equivalent expression. Which is of course what he meant, and everyone understood it (or at least everyone but her) but technically she was correct, he hadn’t named the actual crimes themselves, but had only referred to them.
Then you need to get out more, and watch more entertainment. RICO is a colloquial term that is used to describe someone being brought up on a myriad of criminal. It makes it much easier to say someone is being charged with RICO than to say they’re being charged with laundering, bribery, embezzlement, and host of other charges.
And even you understand this when you use term “RICO violations”. That is a colloquialism.
So no, she wasn’t technically correct, and as he was going to answer her question, she interjected, which means she wsnt interested in the answer, anyway.
Bobulinski should not have engaged her:
“Ma’am, I’m here to tell you good people what it is I observed. It’s up to others to determine if what I saw were crimes. I understand government has attorneys who can indict a ham sandwich, so I don’t think they’ll have any trouble identifying potential crimes for you.”
You lost me at “AOC thinks….”
Semantics is no way to win an argument. AOC should go back to waiting tables instead of waiting for communism.
Come on. Is, she was a bartender, I think that’s one step up from waitress
Having been one
As stupid as Ocasio-Cortez is, she is also very dangerous.
Like it or not, she has a significant following and there are many ignorant voters who have the same Marxist/Leftist mindset that she does. Unfortunately, she is quite skilled at stirring up such people.
NY must be so proud…
Tony is testifying about what he saw while a business partner of Hunter, he isn’t there as a prosecutor or criminal law professor.
A crime? Depends on whether it interferes with anything a Democrat wants.
It all balances out. AOC thinks pedagogy is a sex crime. Understandable, if she’s only seen Democrats do it.
I thought Rico was a soldier from Buenos Aires that defended Earth from Klendathu. He was a war hero that embodied the meaning of citizenship.
Silly, he’s fro Wakanda
If I recall correctly he wasn’t from BA, his family had been there on vacation when the bomb fell. I don’t think it’s specified where he lived, but his ethnicity, which is not revealed until the last line, may be a clue.
Our records are unclear from that time, but one thing is certain. In Rasczak’s Roughnecks
“Everyone fights. No one quits. You don’t do your job, I’ll shoot you.”
Juan Rico was from the Philippines — he mentions that people speak Tagalog where he grew up. His mother was visiting an aunt in Buenos Aires when the bugs destroyed it. Ethnically, likely of Spanish descent, certainly didn’t look like Doogie Howser.
Yes, he says that in the very last line. That’s the surprise ending. So we know he’s Filipino, but we don’t know whether his family still lives there. That’s never specified, just that wherever they live it’s not BA.
Heinlein loved doing things like that. When he wrote I Will Fear No Evil he had pictures of two women in front of him, one white and one black, and with every line he wrote about Eunice, or that he put into her mouth, he looked at each picture in turn and made sure it sounded equally plausible for both. We never find out her race, and he wanted to make sure he gave no clues.
By engaging in this clumsy rhetorical sleight of hand AOC hopes to fool people into believing that the Bidens are just innocent little puppies.
Well, RICO is a crime about crime, so you need a crime to have the crime of RICO. And I’m thinking AOC heard this tidbit in a way that she internalized as “RICO isn’t a crime.”
Of course, she was also provided an answer that included the crime which would be the substance of the RICO charge. So she’s doubly stupid.
Yes, that’s probably what went through her mind. But it seems a lot of people don’t understand RICO. There’s even a T-shirt.
New Dork has to be proud of that airhead.
Still waiting for any of this evidence of a crime to materialise, its pretty obvious MAGA have nothing otherwise they would have impeached already. It’s a clown show but then that’s the norm for MAGA
Even if you were correct (which you are not), the multiple Trump impeachments prove that high crimes and misdemeanors are no longer required for impeachment. The Biden impeachment process benefits from the new lower standard established by Pelosi.
The multiple times Trump was impeached for real crimes and was let of because McConnell stated he could be made to be held to account as a citizen. Republic senators having no moral standards isn’t much of an argument.
As for Biden, the show is a joke. As testimony now indicates its been a Russian misinformation operation. The evidence presented has been so poor the entire media has been laughing at the hearings, its utterly embarrassing. It’s such a joke a democrat offered to sponsor the impeachment to comers face, of course Comer didn’t take him up on his offer because he knows its a vapid nonsensical waste of time and money.
You might be stupid enough to believe that load of codswallow you just spit out.
Belief has nothing to do with it. I’ve referred to objective reality.
My God, could you be a bigger idiot.
I could be you, so yeah. It amazes me how much of a snowflake people like you are. I present facts and the best you can do is childish insults. It’s pitiful.
So, the Biden family has 20 or so shell companies that exist for no other reason than to move money around surreptitiously (according to a few dozen bank reports of suspicious activity), in some cases selling no known product, with no demonstrated expertise in the businesses with which they are engaged, and all of these businesses are in places like China, Russia, and Ukraine, and there’s nothing to see here? The point of an investigation is to determine what is burning when one sees smoke (which includes evidence of influence-peddling on the laptop from hell – why does Joe need a code name?). You’re telling me that, in spite of all the smoke, there’s no fire?
What law did Trump break when he had his phone call with Ukraine? The POTUS sets foreign policy. If he demands anti-corruption efforts before aid is forthcoming (a requirement under the aid agreement), he can demand it.
What overt act shows that Trump had anything to do with J6? What crime did he commit? We now know that several other (bad) actors turned down additional security at the Capitol, and that other exculpatory evidence and testimony was buried by the J6 committee. The committee seems to have illegally destroyed or has otherwise hidden the documentation of their investigation. If those items demonstrated Trump’s involvement in the riot, the committee would have published all of it. Yet they did not. How stupid do you have to be to think Trump committed a crime that day?
1. Biden
Your not actually saying anything here are you. Comer has she’ll companies. So what. The question is after 15 months of wasting tax payer money has the committe found anything and the answer is not only a no but actually the entire basis upon which the investigation started turns out to be a story spun by a Russian agent. This is the height of stupidity.
2. Trump was charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Both of which were well evidenced. In fact so much so that republican senators basically said yeah he did it but we won’t impeach
3. Jan 6th are you dense, Trump incited the actions for months by claiming the section was stolen, he tried (using his lawyers) to create a fraudulent slate of electors. And nonwe don’t know that the Jan 6th committee buried evidence, your just acting like a conspiracy theorist here and not actually basing your view in reality. There is absolutely tonnes of evidence in the public domain demonstrating Trumps guilt and still you make excuses.
The double standard you apply between the Bidens and Trump is extreme. In the Biden case the MAGA case is so embarrassing that it now looks like Comer and Jordan have been useful idiots to Russia, in Trumps case its become established fact in court that he incited Jan 6th. It wasn’t even a question at the supreme Court, it’s established fact.
You should go back to your corner in the pre-school and resume your daily regimen of huffing paint fumes, you blithering idiot.
1. Biden
Your not actually saying anything here are you. Comer has she’ll companies. So what. The question is after 15 months of wasting tax payer money has the committe found anything and the answer is not only a no but actually the entire basis upon which the investigation started turns out to be a story spun by a Russian agent. This is the height of stupidity.
2. Trump was charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Both of which were well evidenced. In fact so much so that republican senators basically said yeah he did it but we won’t impeach
3. Jan 6th are you dense, Trump incited the actions for months by claiming the section was stolen, he tried (using his lawyers) to create a fraudulent slate of electors. And nonwe don’t know that the Jan 6th committee buried evidence, your just acting like a conspiracy theorist here and not actually basing your view in reality. There is absolutely tonnes of evidence in the public domain demonstrating Trumps guilt and still you make excuses.
The double standard you apply between the Bidens and Trump is extreme. In the Biden case the MAGA case is so embarrassing that it now looks like Comer and Jordan have been useful idiots to Russia, in Trumps case its become established fact in court that he incited Jan 6th. It wasn’t even a question at the supreme Court, it’s established fact.
“Your not saying…”? Having a bit of a grammar problem, are you?
“Materialise?”
Why would we give a crap what a Brit thinks?
“AOC Thinks”
Ha. Ha. That’s a good one.
AOC asked a smart question: what specific crime. The whole reason for the RICO statutes is because many people can commit acts which cannot be categorized as crimes (maybe misdemeanors at best) but nevertheless when acting in concert under an organized leadership is a criminal enterprise. That’s why prosecuting crime families once proved difficult; a prosecutor could not pin anything solid on Vinny or Tony, but their activities on the whole was detrimental to a civil society.
Biden’s corruption fall under that category as well — asking someone for money or doing someone a favor in and of itself is not a crime (which is what AOC was going for) but the pattern of that, along with others in on the act, constitutes the corruption. And that is what the gentleman was explaining in his spot on answer.
AOC bitterly clinging to a lame defense of Biden. It’s only going to go downhill from here.
The only “crime” AOC is familiar with is when the bar patron doesn’t leave her a tip.
Report on the Biden Laptop that thoroughly documents 459 crimes committed by the Bidens & their associates.
•140 business crimes
•191 sex crimes
•128 drug crimes
On page 117, the Report documents Xi Jinping personally approving of the business partnership between CEFC China Energy and President Biden’s family.
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1770511437817147893
The report is moronic, I picked a random page and it tried to claim crimes from Biden in 2017 when he was a private citizen. Lets be clear you’ve picked as your source a conspiracy theorist posting an obscure report from a barely known opposition research firm. Maybe less gullible next time.
So you admit you only picked a single point in the report and used it out of context to the entire report? Perhaps that particular point was that a pattern of corruption existed during the time he was in and out of office, which has been proven. Now please, do move along Barty.
Interesting rhetorical trick: way above her capabilities, but she can deliver on the script. “Obvious, common sense” and “outraged confusion” are in her range. So, let her ask that question, then be outraged and confused that there’s no instant, bullet proof answer to a question that can’t be answered that way, in that venue.
.
“Name the crimes”, was trolling for “make your case”: no way to do that in a time-limited, question-driven venue with interruptions. That’s why people deliver their reports before hand — get to make their whole presentation. That’s why there are trials, with discovery, and etc. The point is it doesn’t fit in a sound bite.
She could have said “examples” or “instances”, or “describe the events.” The problem is that any of those would have opened a bunch of responses,like: in the report. (She already shouted down the witness trying to point to examples in the report.)
Repeating the exact words “specific crimes” leaves her stuck on script if she doesn’t know what’s going on, or sticking to the words if she does. Either way, her doing this demonstrates this wasn’t about anyone learning anything. But, we knew that.