'Rat bingo': Reporter says prosecutors are playing a game with Trump's co-defendants
Prosecutors in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office are playing a special game with plea agreements in the Georgia election racketeering case, argued reporter Hugo Lowell on MSNBC's "The Beat" Tuesday — and there's even a special term for what they're doing.
"Briefly before I lose you, you have this scoop," said anchor Ari Melber, himself an attorney. "Do you have an idea of why some out there might want this out there? We haven't seen a denial or anything like that from the D.A.'s office. It's almost like a warning shot to say to Giuliani, you missed your window already."
"The phrase being used inside the D.A.'s office is 'rat bingo,'" said Lowell.
"What is rat bingo?" asked Melber.
"It is who gets to negotiate these plea deals first gets the best deal — it is just their term for it, as I understand it," said Lowell. "And there are ongoing discussions with several co-defendants, and I don't know if this is an effort to divvy them up and say, look, we can't add people to this list and send you to trial as a RICO codefendant, but I think it's a particularly big blow to Meadows and Giuliani, because Meadows was in the market for a deal. And Giuliani, who's got the compounding legal debts, now he's going to be forced to go to trial?"
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"I don't shoot the messenger. You're just the messenger," said Melber. "Rat bingo is a game of chance. This is more like rat race. Do you feel rat bingo really captures it?"
"I think you have to ask the D.A.'s office," said Lowell. "Maybe it's a game of chance because — they're pretty fluid. They're prepared to cut deals in different directions. For instance, Sidney Powell didn't plead guilty to a felony, but Chesebro did. He pleaded guilty to a felony and acknowledged the slates of electors were fraudulent, and that is obviously a big part of the RICO case. That's one of the major themes, one of the overacts in the conspiracy."
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