Giuliani, under RICO indictment in Georgia election case, once lobbied NY to strengthen the law

NEW YORK — Almost 40 years ago, one of the most effective crusaders against organized crime in New York City urged state legislators to arm local prosecutors with laws to take down double-dealing politicians and the mob.

“New York State is not a bad place to be, if you want to break the law,” then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani told attendees at an April 1986 luncheon, the Daily News reported.

Calling for a package of reforms in the Empire State targeting corrupt power brokers in the criminal underworld and elected office, Giuliani lauded the possibilities of little-used RICO laws — Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — available to federal prosecutors and enacted in states like California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

Now, in a steep fall from grace, Giuliani is on the other side of the coin, charged in a sweeping RICO case involving alleged efforts by former President Trump to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, which adopted its racketeering law in 1980. It’s a turn of events that Giuliani’s younger self had sought to prosecute zealously.

In the wake of his indictment Monday alongside former President Trump and 17 others for allegedly scheming to subvert the state’s 2020 presidential election results, Giuliani struck a different tone than he did at the City Club luncheon 37 years ago.

The 79-year-old condemned the charges he innovated to take down the mob as “an affront to American Democracy.”

Long before he reached the apex of his career as America’s mayor following the 2001 Twin Tower attacks, Giuliani would pioneer the type of charges he now faces, playing an instrumental role in taking down some of the city’s most notorious mobsters. RICO laws allow prosecutors to encompass the whole picture of crimes committed by an enterprise and target those at the top and not just their underlings.

Georgia’s RICO statute outlaws people from “directly or indirectly” acquiring an interest in an enterprise “through a pattern of racketeering activity or proceeds derived therefrom,” whether or not the organization realized its goal or conspired without getting it off the ground. The state law defines racketeering on a more expansive scale, posing a more significant threat to defendants than those charged with the federal statute.

In 1985, he brought racketeering cases against members of the Five Families under what The News described as “an unprecedented interpretation of the anti-racketeering law, RICO,” securing the convictions of five chiefs.

The top prosecutor split a trove of wiretap evidence gathered by state investigators with his Brooklyn counterpart, U.S. Attorney Raymond Dearie — the now-veteran federal judge who last year served as special counsel in the Justice Department probe into Trump’s taking of classified documents from the White House.

The zealous prosecutor condemned state criminal procedures he said made it “extremely difficult to investigate major corruption.”

“A lot of rules surrounding indictment, grand jury, conspiracy and bribery laws in New York are just out of date,” Giuliani lamented.

In 1985, then-Deputy State Attorney General Ronald Goldstock told The News the bugged calls were shared with the federal prosecutors as the state was hamstrung from taking action.

“We had gone as far as we could go because New York State has no RICO statute, but the feds do,” Goldstock said.

When he prepared to leave his post at the U.S. Attorney’s office, The News correctly predicted Giuliani might one day go on to great things.

“Rudolph Giuliani is a man of many faces. To fans and many fellow prosecutors, he’s Eliot Ness and Thomas Dewey rolled into one racking up legal victories over Mafia violence, government corruption and Wall Street greed,” The News reported.

“To fans and critics alike, the 44-year-old Giuliani is a personally incorruptible and driven figure who may well parlay his high prosecution profile into leap to the mayor’s office.”

But nobody saw the RICO charges coming, which could see the former top prosecutor spend the rest of his days in prison if convicted.