'Perfect irony': Giuliani faces RICO charge similar to one he popularized as prosecutor
As an upstart chief prosecutor in perhaps the most prestigious legal office in the country, Rudy Giuliani in the mid-1980s made use of a novel way to quell the scourge of New York organized crime -- leveraging a brand new, little-known federal statute called Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.
Using RICO, as it's known, Giuliani managed to charge dozens of mobsters with seemingly unrelated crimes, all under the umbrella of one overarching scheme. At the time, it was a revolutionary use of federal law and it later served as a model for state and federal prosecutors around the country.
As U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Giuliani's successful prosecutions of New York's storied crime families made him a media darling and launched Giuliani's political career. But now, four decades later, Giuliani finds himself on the other side of his own legal legacy -- facing Georgia state criminal RICO charges in the Fulton County district attorney's case against his longtime boss, former President Donald Trump, and 18 of his allies.
"This is perfect, perfect irony," said Anthony Cardinale, a veteran defense attorney who represented "Fat Tony" Salerno, the former head of the Genovese crime family, in 1986. "Giuliani is going to be sitting in a courtroom, pray to God ... 40 years after he started bringing these exact types of cases."
To read more about Giuliani's winding road to prosecution, click here.
-ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman
