Georgia prosecutor ends 2020 election interference case against Trump, allies
A Georgia prosecutor on Wednesday said the state is dropping criminal charges against President Donald Trump and others related to their push to overturn the 2020 election, ending the last remaining criminal case against the president.
The case began after the leak of a January 2021 phone call in which Trump urged Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to reverse his 2020 loss in the state. A grand jury indicted Trump and others on racketeering charges in August 2023, but the case soon faced setbacks over allegations that the lead prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, had an inappropriate relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Peter Skandalakis, the prosecutor who took over the case earlier this month after courts said Willis could not participate, said Wednesday that the prosecution was flawed and impractical to pursue. In a 23-page court filing, he said “reasonable minds could differ” in interpreting Trump’s call with Raffensperger and questioned the value of continuing to prosecute Trump now that he is back in the White House.
“There is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial on the allegations in this indictment,” Skandalakis wrote. “Donald J. Trump’s current term as President of the United States of America does not expire until January 20, 2029; by that point, eight years will have elapsed since the phone call at issue.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead defense attorney in Georgia, celebrated the end of what he called the “political persecution of President Trump” in a statement Wednesday.
“This case should never have been brought,” Sadow said. “A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.”
The end of the Georgia case means that Trump no longer faces charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which he falsely claimed was marred by widespread fraud. Federal prosecutors dropped election-interference charges against Trump last year after he won a second term.
Then-special counsel Jack Smith, who was leading the federal case, defended the charges at the time but noted that Justice Department policy bars prosecution of a sitting president.
One criminal case against Trump went to trial before the 2024 election on charges brought by New York prosecutors that he falsified business records related to hush money payments for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was convicted on those charges but received no penalty in a sentencing held after he was reelected.
Federal prosecutors also charged Trump with mishandling classified documents. But a federal judge dismissed the indictment in summer 2024, finding that Smith was improperly appointed as special counsel.
Skandalakis wrote in his motion to drop the cases that because the certification of electoral votes was at the center of the case, the federal investigation by Smith was “the most appropriate venue to bring charges.”
He also rejected the idea of holding separate trials for others charged in the case, such as Trump’s lawyers and advisers, saying that pursuing such cases would be “unduly burdensome” for the state and county.
“Our agency is simply not equipped to carry out this case while meeting the essential duties required under the current budget—or under any realistically conceivable budget the state could provide,” he wrote.
Judge Scott McAfee of the Superior Court of Fulton County wrote in an order Wednesday that the case is “hereby dismissed in its entirety.”
In the phone call at the center of the case, Trump—in the final days of his first term—insisted falsely to Raffensperger that he beat Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia and told Raffensperger, “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.” He also suggested Raffensperger and his general counsel could be criminally liable if they did not substantiate baseless allegations that thousands of ballots in Fulton County had been illegally destroyed.
Raffensperger rejected Trump’s claims, and audio of the call leaked, drawing attention to the president’s extraordinary campaign of pressuring fellow Republicans he hoped would reject Biden’s victory.
A Georgia grand jury ultimately indicted Trump and 18 co-defendants accused of illegally working to overturn Trump’s loss. Prosecutors used Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, created to combat organized crime, accusing Trump and his allies of engaging in a wide range of criminal conduct related to the election. They cited Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger as well as the harassment of an election worker, pressure on federal officials and efforts by “fake electors” to claim, inaccurately, that Trump won.
Trump pleaded not guilty and accused Willis, the Democratic district attorney who brought the charges, of leading a “political witch hunt.” The prosecutions galvanized support for Trump in the GOP base, and Trump raised money off his glaring Fulton County mug shot.
Willis’s case faltered amid scrutiny of her relationship with fellow prosecutor Wade. A judge found a “significant appearance of impropriety” and said either Willis or Wade had to leave the case. Wade resigned, and Willis was eventually disqualified from the case as well. Skandalakis said this month that he would take the case because he could not find another prosecutor for it.
Explaining his decision to drop charges, Skandalakis said many of the acts Fulton County prosecutors scrutinized did not amount to criminal activity that would justify a racketeering case. He also said it is possible that Trump genuinely believed that the results in Georgia were marred by fraud and was asking the secretary of state to evaluate whether such fraud changed the outcome.
Skandalakis cast himself as a neutral party in a politically charged case, saying he has no “emotional connection” to it and noting that he has run as both a Democrat and a Republican in the past. Skandalakis spent more than 25 years as the district attorney for the Coweta Judicial Circuit before becoming executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a state office.
Patrick Marley and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
