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Georgia prosecutors have dropped their 2020 election interference case against President Donald Trump.
Pete Skandalakis filed a motion to dismiss the case that initially accused Trump and others of conspiring to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results in favor of Joe Biden.
The state charges are the final criminal legal case against the U.S. president since the 2020 election. The case was initially brought by District Attorney Fannie Willis, but was removed from the case by the state Supreme Court amid a personal scandal.
A lawyer for Trump said in response to the firing: “Fair and impartial prosecutors have concluded the law.”
Willis was removed from the case after a court determined that his romantic relationship with a special prosecutor assigned to the case constituted “inappropriate conduct.”
Skandalakis, executive director of the nonpartisan Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys Council, appointed himself to the case after Willis was disbarred and other state prosecutors declined to take the case.
In a motion filed Wednesday with a Fulton County judge, Skandalakis said he would stay the case “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.”
“As a former elected official who has run as a Democrat and Republican and is now the executive director of a nonpartisan agency, this decision was not driven by a desire to advance an agenda, but rather based on my beliefs and understanding of the law,” Skandalakis added.
Willis began investigating the case in February 2021 after the Washington Post published an audio recording of Trump’s conversation with Brad Raffensperger, the state’s Republican secretary of state. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said in a January 2, 2021, phone call. That’s how much he lost to Joe Biden in the state.
Willis filed an indictment in August 2023 accusing Trump of conspiring with 18 other defendants to interfere with the election results. The charges include racketeering and other state crimes.
The group “refuses to accept that Trump lost and that they knowingly and willfully participated in a conspiracy to illegally change the election results in favor of Trump.”
The case’s dismissal also included charges against 18 of Trump’s co-defendants, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, and Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff during his first term as president.
