Georgia Judge Dismisses Last Criminal Case Accusing Trump Of Trying To Overturn 2020 Election

On Nov. 26, 2025, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed the last pending state criminal prosecution accusing former President Donald Trump and co-defendants of trying to overturn the 2020 Georgia election.

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The dismissal came after state prosecutor Peter (Pete) Skandalakis moved to drop the case.

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McAfee granted the motion almost immediately and wrote that the case was dismissed in its entirety.

The decision effectively ended the Fulton County RICO indictment that had shadowed Trump’s return to the presidency.

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The underlying indictment, filed in August 2023 under Georgia’s racketeering (RICO) statute, accused Trump and 18 co-defendants of a conspiracy centered on soliciting state officials and promoting false fraud claims after the Jan. 2, 2021 phone call in which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger he "only need[ed] 11,000 votes."

The case named high-profile figures including Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows and was treated as uniquely consequential because state convictions would not be subject to presidential pardons.

ABC News

The immediate procedural cause of the dismissal was the disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after an appeals court found an appearance of impropriety tied to her romantic relationship with a special prosecutor.

“Fulton County taxpayers may have to pay President Donald Trump and his co-defendants in therecently killed2020 election interference case millions of dollars in legal fees”

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That disqualification complicated efforts to recruit replacement prosecutors.

Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia, assumed control and filed a 22-23 page motion arguing the case was unproductive, better handled at the federal level, and could take years more to resolve.

Those arguments prompted McAfee to grant dismissal.

Responses were sharply divided: Trump and his legal team celebrated the ruling as vindication and called the original prosecution politically motivated, while critics and some legal observers said the dismissal foreclosed an accountability pathway for allegations they view as serious.

Media outlets also framed the outcome differently: some called it the definitive end of related state cases, while others stressed ongoing political fallout or noted earlier plea deals and convictions of certain co‑defendants.

Al Jazeera

Outlets noted legal and practical implications beyond immediate politics.

The dismissal removes the last state-level criminal exposure tied to Trump’s post-2020 conduct and follows related federal actions that were affected by DOJ policy on prosecuting a sitting president.

Atlanta News First

Commentators also flagged that resource constraints, jurisdictional questions, and long timelines influenced Skandalakis’ calculus and leave open debates about whether accountability could or should be pursued in other venues.