Judge dismisses Trump election interference racketeering case in Georgia

A judge in Georgia on Wednesday dismissed the historic racketeering case brought against President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn his loss in the state’s 2020 election.

The ruling by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who ordered the case “dismissed in its entirety,” draws to a close the final criminal case against Trump that remained unresolved after he won back the White House in 2024.

McAfee’s ruling came shortly after state prosecutor Peter Skandalakis moved to drop the case against Trump and his remaining co-defendants “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.”

“In my professional judgment, the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years,” Skandalakis wrote in a court filing.

Trump celebrated the ruling later Wednesday, writing in a lengthy Truth Social post that “LAW and JUSTICE have prevailed.”

“This case should never have been brought,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement. “A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.”

The case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis initially charged Trump with 13 criminal counts, including the serious charge of violating Georgia’s powerful anti-racketeering law.

The indictment, returned by a grand jury in August 2023, alleged that Trump and numerous co-defendants — including his former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — illegally tried to reverse Joe Biden‘s victory in the state’s 2020 presidential contest.

Those efforts included pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find Trump enough votes for him to overcome his margin of loss to Biden.

The case was once seen as one of the biggest threats to the GOP leader, who was already grappling with a torrent of other criminal indictments and civil lawsuits. At least four of Trump’s 18 co-defendants pleaded guilty within two months of the indictment being filed.

It also produced one of the most striking images in recent U.S. political history: a mugshot of the president, who was forced to travel to Fulton County jail to be booked on the state charges.

But the case ran into major problems long before Trump’s reelection in 2024 effectively put it on ice.

In September 2024, McAfee tossed out two of the criminal counts against Trump and some of his co-defendants, though he kept the top charges intact.

By that time, Willis was facing intensifying scrutiny over her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, one of the top prosecutors in the criminal case. She defended herself in dramatic courtroom testimony against the allegations of impropriety, but was disqualified from the case in December 2024.

The Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear Willis’ appeal. The case was eventually handed to Skandalakis on Nov. 14, less than two weeks before he asked McAfee to dismiss it.

“This entire case, from the initiation of the District Attorney’s investigation in 2021 to the present, is without precedent,” Skandalakis wrote in the 23-page request for McAfee to drop the case.

“Never before, and hopefully never again, will our country face circumstances such as these,” he wrote in the motion for what is known as a “nolle prosequi.”

He noted that the prospect of bringing the case against Trump to trial would take years, as there is “no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear” in court and it would be “impossible” to quickly proceed after he leaves office in 2029.

Skandalakis also foreclosed on the possibility of severing Trump from the remaining defendants and conducting separate trials, writing that it would be “both illogical and unduly burdensome and costly for the State and for Fulton County.”

“Some may argue that cases against the campaign attorneys and advisors should proceed even if President Trump is removed from the indictment,” Skandalakis wrote. “However, I am extremely reluctant to criminalize the act of attorneys providing flawed legal advice to the President of the United States under these circumstances.”

The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia also lacks the resources to conduct multiple trials, according to Skandalakis. “Continuing this litigation under these circumstances would neither serve the citizens of Georgia nor fulfill our statutory obligations.”

Despite asking for the case to be closed, Skandalakis suggested that the efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, in Georgia and elsewhere, were serious.

“As I have previously stated, contesting an election is not unlawful,” he wrote. “However, the strategy conceived in Washington, D.C. to contest the 2020 Presidential Election quickly shifted from a legitimate legal effort into a campaign that ultimately culminated in an attack on the Capitol, undertaken to prevent the Vice President from carrying out his ministerial duty of counting the electoral votes.”

Skandalakis said he believed the case would be “best pursued at the federal level.”

But he acknowledged that former special counsel Jack Smith, who had pursued federal election interference charges against Trump, was forced to drop his case after the Supreme Court strengthened immunity powers for former presidents, and after Trump won reelection.