25 signatures reached
To: Attorney General, Pam Bondi
RICO THE TRUMP:MAGA ENTERPRISE
As the nation’s top law enforcement official, the U.S. Attorney General has the power to direct the Department of Justice to open federal RICO investigations into the Trump/MAGA enterprise. Only DOJ can bring a comprehensive federal racketeering case that looks at the full pattern of election interference, intimidation, corrupt pardons, and obstruction. That is why this petition is directed to you, Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General.
It’s understandable if you, Attorney General, Bondi must recuse yourself of undertaking a federal RICO investigation. However, you will not be excused if you yourself are implicated in such a RICO investigation post-term.
It’s understandable if you, Attorney General, Bondi must recuse yourself of undertaking a federal RICO investigation. However, you will not be excused if you yourself are implicated in such a RICO investigation post-term.
Why is this important?
WE THE UNDERSIGNED, believe it is time to say out loud what too many officials have tiptoed around: the Trump/MAGA political machine looks less like a normal political movement and more like a coordinated enterprise that warrants a serious RICO investigation.
RICO — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — was written to deal with organized crime. It is triggered when there is
- an enterprise, and
- a pattern of racketeering activity — multiple serious offenses committed to advance that enterprise.
In plain language, the law asks whether there is an organized operation that repeatedly uses illegal tactics to gain and hold power.
We are not talking about one ugly speech or one hateful tweet. We are talking about a sustained pattern of conduct that, taken together, looks very much like the work of a political crime syndicate, including:
- Election interference: Pressuring officials to “find votes,” trying to discard lawful ballots, and organizing fake electors to overturn a certified election, while whipping up a crowd that became the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
- Extortion of public officials and institutions: Threatening governors, secretaries of state, legislators, and universities with being “primaried,” defunded, or publicly targeted unless they bend the law or silence students and faculty to serve one leader’s personal power.
- Abusive use of state power and lawless detentions: Immigration sweeps and “disappearances” in which immigrants and even citizens who resist are detained with little or no meaningful due process, and federal forces are used in ways that appear aimed more at suppressing dissent than enforcing neutral law.
- Attacks on the free press: Branding mainstream media as “enemies of the people,” threatening television networks with retaliation, and bullying journalists for reporting inconvenient facts as part of a broader attempt to intimidate and discredit independent scrutiny.
- Corrupt use of pardons and obstruction: Dangling or granting pardons to loyalists facing serious charges, including those tied to the insurrection; repeatedly defying subpoenas and court orders; and using disinformation and delay to block investigations and run out the clock.
- Incendiary rhetoric against political opponents: Describing Democrats as “traitors” whose actions are “punishable by death,” and echoing supporters’ calls to “hang them” for supposed treason, language that normalizes violence as a political tool.
If an organization of mobsters did these things — manipulating elections, menacing officials, terrorizing immigrants, threatening the press, talking openly about executing opponents, obstructing investigations, and then protecting its henchmen — no one would hesitate to call for a RICO probe. The only thing shielding this enterprise is political cowardice and the unwillingness to apply the law to the powerful.
We therefore respectfully demand:
- That the U.S. Department of Justice open comprehensive RICO investigations into the Trump/MAGA network.
- That state attorneys general examine RICO or comparable statutes under their own laws where the enterprise has operated within their jurisdictions.
- That grand juries be empaneled where appropriate to hear evidence of a possible criminal enterprise involving election interference, coordinated intimidation, corrupt pardons, and systematic obstruction of justice.
- That members of Congress publicly support and defend these investigations, rather than attacking or undermining them for partisan gain.
No movement, no campaign, and no ex-president is above the law. If this conduct does not merit a RICO investigation, then the statute is meaningless.
Our justice system either applies its most powerful tools to the most powerful offenders, or it becomes a joke. The rest of us live under the law every day. It is long past time that this enterprise did