Atlanta, GA — Money laundering charges against three Atlanta Solidarity Fund defendants, who are among the 61 people indicted in a sprawling conspiracy lawsuit against Cop City protesters, have been dropped as of Tuesday.
Last year Marlon Kautz, Adele Maclean and Savannah Patterson were indicted as part of Georgia’s wide-reaching Racketeering Influenced Criminal Organization, or RICO, case that the state filed against opponents of the multi-million dollar police training compound known as Cop City.
The three organizers were arrested and charged during a raid on their home by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Atlanta Police Department in May last year. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers were, in part, accused of money laundering for accepting and disbursing donations to support the struggle against the 85-acre police facility. On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General John Fowler dropped all money laundering charges during a hearing in Fulton Superior Court.
The accusations of financial crimes served as justification for the three being named in the RICO indictment. The state alleged that their managing of funds amounted to “furtherance of the conspiracy” against Cop City.
The state’s indictment accused the organizers of participating in a criminal conspiracy described as extremist and violently anti-government, but Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers say they were doing nothing more than standard, constitutionally protected political organizing.
“This is a recognition of something that we, police, and prosecutors have known for a long time: we run a legitimate nonprofit, not a money laundering operation, and there has never been any evidence otherwise,” Marlon Kautz, one of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund defendants, told Unicorn Riot in a statement.
Though Kautz, Maclean and Patterson were the only people in the indictment facing money laundering charges, the alleged financial crimes acted as a key component of the state’s wider RICO prosecution. Prosecutors used the alleged money laundering to support their claims that the movement against Cop City was a criminal enterprise rather than a self-organized grassroots movement.
While the money laundering charges have been dropped, the organizers are still facing criminal charges, and the repercussions from the now-dropped charges are still very real.
“Dismissing these charges now does nothing to undo the harm to us and to the many political protesters whose lives have already been drastically impacted,” Kautz said. “Over the past 2 years they conducted extensive invasive surveillance against us and other organizers, they authorized a militarized SWAT raid of our home, they jailed us, they closed our organization’s bank accounts, all under the false pretense that we were laundering money.”
Kautz, Maclean and Patterson are among 58 other defendants named in the state’s RICO case against the movement to stop Cop City.
“This case is far from over, but we are committed to fighting these charges in solidarity with all other Cop City defendants, until everyone is free. We believe that we will win,” Kautz said.
The prosecution against protesters began last year on the heels of a widespread movement against the training facility. Through occupations, protests, marches and petitions, residents worked to oppose the project which they say will only intensify police violence in Atlanta and beyond. In response, local, state and federal law enforcement have arrested dozens, some of whom are currently being prosecuted under the state’s RICO statute. On January 18, 2023, police killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Terán in the South River Forest near the facility’s construction site.
Atlanta city officials also face accusations of antidemocratic authoritarianism as they continue to refuse to process over 100,000 petition signatures for a ballot initiative to allow local residents to vote on whether or not they want the publicly owned land to be leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation – a private nonprofit – to host the controversial urban warfare training center.