**Breaking: Legal Experts Draw Rare Parallel Between Trump RICO Case and 1970s Mafia Takedown**
CNN — In an exclusive analysis, historians and former federal prosecutors are noting a striking structural parallel between the latest RICO indictment out of Georgia involving former President Trump and one of the most dramatic Mafia takedowns of the 20th century: the famous "Commission Case" of 1985.
Just as prosecutors in the 1980s used the RICO Act to dismantle the heads of New York’s Five Families for orchestrating a criminal enterprise through phone calls, meetings, and coded orders, legal experts argue the latest evidence shows a similar "enterprise" model—alleging coordinated pressure campaigns, false elector slates, and telephonic lobbying of state officials.
“This isn’t just about one man making a call,” one former DOJ official told CNN. “This is a hidden historical pattern: when prosecutors see a system being gamed from the top down, RICO is the hammer. They don’t use it for a single crime; they use it for a conspiracy of silence and coordination. That’s why the 1970s Mafia bosses fell, and it’s the exact theory here.”
As Trump’s legal team dismisses the charges as political, historians note the irony: the law originally designed to take down the most secretive organizations in American history is now facing its most public and controversial target yet.