A state prosecutor in Georgia, concluding that a criminal case there against President Trump is too important, too complex and too time-consuming to go forward in state court, dropped all charges Wednesday morning. A state judge swiftly ordered the case “dismissed in its entirety.”
Trump’s troubles with the criminal law are now down to one case, the 34 guilty verdicts against him by a New York City jury. Trump is appealing in a federal court, and the case is on newly shaky legal ground over whether the President can shift his challenge to federal court, with the prospect that it, too, might be totally ended.
Before he was elected to a second term last year, Trump faced four criminal prosecutions; two federal cases that had yet to go to trial, the Georgia state cases tied up for months amid claims of misconduct by prosecutors and still not ready for trial, and the New York verdict,
A common factor in the demise of the two federal cases, in the ending of the Georgia case, and the threat to the guilty verdicts in New York is the wide-ranging impact of the Supreme Court’s historic decision last year granting Trump legal immunity for his official actions as President.
While that ruling was focused on immunity to federal charges, and technically may not ultimately have protected him from state prosecutions, judges and prosecutors handling those two state cases have been leaning strongly toward applying it there, too.
As a result, there is now the real prospect that Trump will avoid all forms of criminal accountability for his misconduct, in and out of office. He does face heavy civil penalties through his business practices and through a verdict of sexual assault against a New York writer; he is challenging all of those penalties in appeals courts.
Wednesday’s demise of the Georgia state case was not much of a surprise, because that case has been troubled by digressions and distractions throughout the 27 months since Trump and 18 of his aides or political followers were charged with 41 crimes and 161 separate criminal acts, all related to attempts to undo Trump’s loss in Georgia in the 2020 election. The most famous piece of evidence against Trump personally was a telephone call he made to state election officials on January 2, 2021, asking them to “find 11,780 votes” in his favor, enough to overcome his loss in the state to Joe Biden.
Caught up in the prosecution were a group of followers who case their Electoral College votes for Trump despite his loss in the state, his then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a high-ranking Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, and several lawyers and political operatives. Aside from those who had pleaded guilty in plea bargains, Wednesday’s dismissal spared all of the others from further prosecution.
The case finally wound up in the hands of a special state prosecutor, Peter J. Skandalakis, who went over the entire record and concluded that he could not successfully prosecute anyone who had not yet pleaded guilty – including President Trump.
In a detailed 23-page document spelling out his reasons, Skandalakis did not rely solely on the difficulty of sorting out Trump’s legal immunity, but he did conclude that the question was unprecedented and was intensely complex that it would not even be addressed until Trump had finished his time in office, and even then might take months and perhaps even years to settle. Ultimately, the prosecutor said a case of this historic importance belonged in federal, not state, court.
His office, the prosecutor said, “lacks the resources to conduct multiple trials.” Citing the constitutional right of accused persons to a speedy trial, he said his office would be forced to start trials immediately.
As to the President as an accused, Skadalakis concluded that “there is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear to stand trial.” The prosecutor added that, if he separated Trump from the case, to be tried after he leaves office (presumably in early 2029), that would be “eight years after the phone call at issue,” presumably making it more difficult to pursue the case.
Meanwhile, in the one remaining case against Trump, the federal appeals court handling Trump’s appeal of the 34 guilty verdicts in New York on Monday put on an accelerated basis the effective date of an earlier ruling that gives Trump a chance to claim immunity to some of the evidence used against him at the trial – evidence that he claims violates his right to legal immunity.
The case will now go quickly back to a federal trial judge in New York City, who has twice refused to allow Trump to transfer the case from state to federal court. Whether it will be transferred appears to depend upon whether there is a realistic chance that he can use an immunity defense in federal court, perhaps even to the extent of having the verdicts wiped out and a new trial barred.
That case may be strung out a little further, but it had lately been going in a direction favorable to Trump, giving him a chance to overturn the guilty verdicts.
