WASHINGTON: A prosecutor on Wednesday (Nov 26) dropped all criminal charges in Georgia against US President Donald Trump for interference in the 2020 presidential election, ending a high-profile racketeering case that once seemed like a significant threat to the Republican.
The decision by Peter Skandalakis, a state official who recently took over the prosecution, was a stinging defeat for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the case in 2023 but then lost control of it amid ethics complaints by defense lawyers.
It was one of four criminal prosecutions that Trump faced in the years since losing his 2020 presidential re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden. Only one of them, a New York case over a hush-money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign, went to trial. Trump was found guilty in that case but has asked for it to be thrown out.
The dismissal highlighted how Trump’s return to the White House this year, a political comeback unparalleled in US history, dismantled a thicket of legal cases that once seemed set to define his post-presidency era.
Trump’s political career had appeared to be over after his false claims of election fraud led a mob of supporters to storm the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, in a failed bid to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Skandalakis said in a court filing that “there is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial,” so it would be “futile and unproductive” to push forward with the case.
Skandalakis said his decision, which was approved by a judge on Wednesday morning, “is not guided by a desire to advance an agenda but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law.”
