Georgia Dismisses Final Election-Interference Case Against Trump and Allies

27 November 2025

Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a hearing in the case of State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., February 15, 2024. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer/Pool

A prosecutor in Georgia on November 26, 2025 dropped all criminal charges against Donald J. Trump and 18 co-defendants in the racketeering case linked to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there.

The case had begun in 2023 under Fani Willis, the then-District Attorney of Fulton County, who accused Trump and his allies of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy that included pressuring Georgia election officials, pushing false elector slates, and trying to manipulate vote counts.

But the case never saw trial. Willis was removed from the prosecution last year after courts ruled that her romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she had appointed constituted a conflict of interest.

Earlier this month the case was handed over to Pete Skandalakis, head of the state’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council. In his motion, he argued it would be “futile and unproductive” to force a sitting president to appear in a Georgia court and that legal and logistical obstacles made conviction unlikely.

Within hours, Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the case, granted the dismissal. In a one-line order he wrote: “This case is hereby dismissed in its entirety.”

Legal analysts described the decision as a blow to efforts to hold Trump accountable for the 2020 campaign’s post-election actions. One noted that the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council lacked the resources to manage such a sprawling case and that the state would likely struggle to reconvene it any time soon if at all.

Supporters of the decision claim that the case was legally flawed from the start, arguing that many of the actions described in the original indictment such as urging election officials to reexamine ballots were political speech, not criminal acts. Prosecutors had also pointed out that state courts might lack the authority to prosecute what was primarily a federal constitutional issue.

For Trump and his allies, the dismissal removes the last state-level legal threat left over from their post-2020 efforts. Of the four major indictments brought against him since that election including separate federal cases and a document-handling case, all have now been dropped or voided, with only a pending civil matter and a past conviction in New York remaining.

Even so, the fallout from the case’s collapse may linger. Some co-defendants accepted plea deals years earlier, sacrificing careers and reputations under the assumption that a state prosecution might succeed. For them, the dismissal may feel like a second betrayal one that erases the possibility of closure or legal vindication.

Observers predict this development will deepen divisions over accountability in American politics. For those who saw the Georgia case as a way to test the limits of executive power and electoral integrity, its end may signal a moment of reckoning or renewed urgency to reform how political crimes are investigated and prosecuted.