Mobsters jailed by Giuliani are 'thrilled' with his RICO prosecution. Former fans are sad.

Rudy Giuliani's inclusion in a list of 19 conspirators charged in Fulton County, Georgia, on Monday with participating in a "criminal enterprise" to overturn the 2020 election "marks the lowest point so far in his yearslong reputational tumble," Dan Berry reported in The New York Times. 

"Once heralded as a fearless lawman" who pioneered the use of federal racketeering laws to take down mafia bosses and white-collar criminals, then as a "game-changing New York City mayor and Sept. 11 hero," Berry said, Giuliani is "now defined by a subservience" to former President Donald Trump "that sometimes veered into buffoonery." He's drowning in seven-figure legal fees that Trump refuses to pay, CNN reported, and he's facing potential jail time under Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law. 

"For people who dislike Rudy Giuliani," and there are many of them in New York, "they feel as if this is the ultimate irony. For people who really liked Giuliani and thought he was a good mayor, they feel as if this is a tragedy," Times journalist Maggie Haberman said on CNN Tuesday night. Giuliani "was somebody who was a renowned national figure for busting mobsters using a similar [racketeering] law, and that he has, in a quest, basically, to be relevant," gotten into such trouble "is very upsetting to the people who still care about him."

For the mobsters whose decades-long convictions he secured, it's hilarious. "You can quote me to say, 'They're f---ing thrilled,'" veteran mob lawyer Murray Richman told The Messenger on Wednesday. "I don't want to say the language, but they really ripped Rudy a new a--hole." About half of his former mafia clients "love Trump. They freaking love Trump," he said. "But all of them are almost unified in their position of hating f---ing Rudy."

 "All of my clients who had the misfortune of being prosecuted by him are laughing now. As am I," defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman told The Messenger. "I'm thrilled that Rudy will now experience what it feels like to be on the wrong end of a RICO prosecution — with a mandatory five years in prison facing him," he added. Giuliani "was a horribly dishonest prosecutor and the wheel of karma is about to crush him."