The historic Georgia criminal case against President Trump and more than a dozen allies for efforts to overturn the 2020 election has officially ended.
“The case is hereby dismissed in its entirety,” Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ordered Wednesday.
Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, moved to end the prosecution against the remaining defendants after he assumed the case from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was disqualified by a court late last year. In his motion to dismiss, Skandalakis wrote, “The criminal conduct alleged in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit’s prosecution was conceived in Washington, D.C., not the State of Georgia,” and said the federal government is the appropriate venue for the prosecution, not the State of Georgia.
The prosecution was the last outstanding criminal case against Trump, after a pair of federal prosecutions — one focused on efforts to overturn the 2020 election and another related to the handling of classified documents — were dropped after Trump returned to the White House earlier this year.
Trump cheered the ruling on social media, writing that “LAW and JUSTICE have prevailed in the Great State of Georgia, as the corrupt Fani Willis Witch Hunt against me, and other Great American Patriots, has been DISMISSED in its entirety.”
The Fulton County DA’s office has not responded to a request for comment.
The historic indictment
In August 2023, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others, including Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in a sprawling racketeering case alleging a conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia. The case was prompted in part by a recorded January 2021 phone call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than the margin of Trump’s loss in Georgia.
The Georgia case also targeted an alleged scheme to submit a slate of Trump electors despite Biden’s victory, efforts to access sensitive voting machine data and campaigns to pressure state officials to interfere with the election result.
After the grand jury indictment, Trump and his co-defendants were booked at the Fulton County Jail — with Trump’s mug shot becoming a lasting image of the case. Most defendants pleaded not guilty. Four accepted plea deals, and those agreements remain binding.
The prosecution was moving toward trial when attorneys for one co-defendant filed a motion to dismiss based on a claim that the district attorney had an improper personal relationship with a special prosecutor she hired for the case. Willis acknowledged the relationship but said it did not affect the case.
Judge McAfee initially ruled Willis could continue if the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, resigned. A few months later, the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, removing Willis and her office from the case. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, letting the removal stand.
Skandalakis’ review and rationale
Skandalakis, a nonpartisan official Georgia law charged with appointing a special prosecutor, announced in November that he would take the case himself after he was unable to recruit anyone else. “It’s important that someone makes a decision on this case,” he said previously. He reviewed the indictment, relevant law and the full case files, including 101 banker boxes of documents and an 8-terabyte hard drive containing the investigative file.
Among Skandalakis’ options were dropping charges against Trump but continuing against others, seeking a superseding or updated indictment, or pursuing some counts while letting others lapse. The statute of limitations for most felony charges in Georgia is four years and five years for racketeering charges. Skandalakis said it would be impractical to continue the prosecution and noted that charges tied to Ruby Freeman, an election worker who faced threats after being falsely accused of fraud, could proceed in Cobb County rather than Fulton.
While prosecutions against some Trump allies continue in other state courts, the Georgia decision closes one of the most high-profile and wide-reaching prosecutions.
Critics and supporters
Georgia State University Law professor Anthony Michael Kreis disagreed with Skandalakis’ view that the state had no role to play. He argued states are crucial in election accountability because a president cannot pardon state charges, and that dropping the case could weaken deterrents to election interference. Kreis said a trial would have allowed the public to hear the evidence and serve as a form of truth-telling that has now been lost.
Skandalakis acknowledged the decision would not be universally popular and said his family received threats after he took over the case. “The role of a prosecutor is not to satisfy public opinion or achieve universal approval; such a goal is both unattainable and irrelevant to the proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” he wrote. “My assessment of this case has been guided solely by the evidence, the law, and the principles of justice.”