What were the legal reasons Special Prosecutor Pete Skandalakis gave for dismissing the Georgia RICO indictment?
Executive summary
Pete Skandalakis grounded his decision to drop the Georgia RICO indictment in a cluster of legal determinations: he concluded key “overt acts” in the indictment were insufficient to sustain a RICO theory, many alleged wrongful acts either occurred outside Fulton County or in other Georgia counties (undermining the required venue and linkage), and that the federal investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith was the more appropriate forum to pursue the most prosecutable claims — all coupled with practical concerns about resources, timing and proof beyond a reasonable doubt [1] [2] [3].
1. RICO “would legally unravel”: insufficiency of many overt acts to prove racketeering
Skandalakis wrote that the RICO count depended on a mosaic of “overt acts” tying multiple defendants together, but upon close inspection many of those acts were ones he would not consider “sufficient to sustain a RICO case,” meaning the predicate offenses and the proof needed for a racketeering enterprise were legally weak as framed in the indictment [1] [2].
2. Venue and jurisdiction problems: acts located outside Fulton County or only in other counties
He concluded certain allegations—such as the harassment and false accusations against Ruby Freeman—occurred “solely in Cobb County,” and other conduct central to the indictment was conceived in Washington, D.C., or involved activity outside Georgia, which prevented those allegations from being used to link conduct in multiple Georgia counties for RICO purposes [2] [3] [4].
3. Federal forum preferred: overlap with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation
Skandalakis repeatedly wrote that the “strongest and most prosecutable” theory was the federal one investigated by Special Counsel Jack Smith, and that much of the criminal conduct alleged was conceived in Washington, D.C., making the federal government the appropriate venue rather than the State of Georgia [3] [5] [6].
4. Difficulties proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for key defendants
He identified particular targets — including federal officials like Jeffrey Clark and Mark Meadows — where the evidentiary record, in his view, “plainly fall[s] short of the far more rigorous standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt required to sustain a criminal conviction,” and cited specific gaps (for example, Clark labeling a draft, submitting it for approval, never delivering the letter) that make criminal attempt claims difficult to sustain [1] [7].
5. Protection for attorneys and reluctance to criminalize flawed legal advice
Skandalakis expressed extreme reluctance to “criminalize the act of attorneys providing flawed legal advice to the President of the United States,” signaling a legal judgment that many allegations against campaign lawyers more properly reflect poor counsel or civic process than criminal racketeering — a point he used to narrow what should survive even if the president were removed from the indictment [8] [7].
6. Practical considerations: resources, delay, and the sitting president issue
He flagged pragmatic obstacles: limited prosecutorial resources at the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to run serial trials, the extraordinary time and complexity counsel would impose (trials possibly stretching into 2029–2031), and the practical difficulty — in his view — of compelling a sitting President to stand trial in Georgia, all of which informed his conclusion that pursuit would not serve the public interest [9] [8] [6].
7. Pushback and alternative readings of Skandalakis’s legal framing
While major outlets report his reasoning as grounded in the legal problems above [5] [3], critics argue he overstates or mischaracterizes aspects of Jack Smith’s conclusions and that some of his venue and sufficiency readings are contestable — notably an analysis alleging Skandalakis misrepresented Smith’s findings — illustrating that alternative legal interpretations exist and that his decision is not merely a neutral parsing of incontrovertible legal defects [10] [6].