Which charges were dismissed against Trump due to prosecutorial misconduct or legal defects?
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Executive summary
Multiple charges and entire indictments against Donald Trump were dismissed or dropped across several prosecutions between 2024–2025. Federal special counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss two federal prosecutions after Trump won reelection (citing DOJ policy not to prosecute a sitting president) and Fulton County charges in Georgia were dropped after the local successor prosecutor declined to proceed; sources report 52 total dismissed counts across the four cases as of Nov. 26, 2025 [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What was dismissed in the two federal prosecutions — and why that wasn’t called “misconduct”
Prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith dropped federal cases after Trump’s 2024 election, including the election-obstruction prosecution in D.C. and the classified-documents case, because Smith said longstanding DOJ policy precludes indicting a sitting president; courts approved at least one dismissal tied to that policy [1] [3]. Reporting and government summaries say Smith later released a report concluding there was sufficient admissible evidence to sustain convictions, but the decision to stop prosecuting rested on policy and timing, not a court finding of prosecutorial misconduct [1] [5].
2. The Georgia racketeering indictment: dismissed after prosecutorial disqualifications and a new prosecutor’s judgment
A sprawling Fulton County RICO indictment that named Trump and co-defendants was dismissed after a sequence of events: DA Fani Willis was disqualified by appellate courts over alleged improper relationship with a special prosecutor; a new prosecutor, Peter Skandalakis, appointed himself and concluded the case was too sprawling and could not reasonably be tried while Trump was president — he moved to dismiss and Judge Scott McAfee granted the motion [6] [7] [4]. News outlets characterize Skandalakis’s filing as grounded in practical and legal judgments about the indictment’s breadth and the realistic prospects for compelling a sitting president’s trial [8] [9].
3. Charges struck earlier on legal defect grounds in Georgia and other courts
Before the final dismissal, judges had already pared counts in some proceedings on specific legal grounds: in Georgia a judge struck three counts for lack of specificity in March 2024 and two additional counts were struck under the Supremacy Clause on Sept. 12, 2024 — examples of judicial findings of legal defect rather than prosecutorial misconduct [2]. That judicial pruning reduced the list of charges long before the ultimate decision to drop the remaining counts [2].
4. Distinction: “dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct” vs. “dismissed for policy or legal defect”
Available reporting separates three rationales in the record: dismissals tied to DOJ policy about not prosecuting a sitting president (Smith’s federal withdrawals) [1] [3]; dismissals or strikes by judges for legal defects such as lack of specificity or constitutional issues (Georgia counts struck earlier) [2]; and dismissals based on prosecutorial staffing, conflicts or questions about the original prosecutor’s conduct that led to disqualification — the Georgia chain reaction that culminated in Skandalakis’s decision [6] [7]. None of the sources allege a court concluded the federal prosecutions were dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct; rather, they cite policy or legal obstacles [1] [5].
5. How many charges were dismissed, and where that number comes from
Compilations of the four separate indictments list 88 original counts across federal and state matters; Ballotpedia and contemporaneous reporting state that by Nov. 26, 2025, 52 charges had been dismissed and 34 convictions remained in the New York case [2]. That figure aggregates many different procedural outcomes across jurisdictions — judicial strikes, prosecutorial motions to dismiss, and policy-driven withdrawals — and is not a single legal finding of misconduct [2].
6. Competing interpretations and the political backdrop
Supporters of dismissal framed the outcomes as vindication and as correction of legally flawed or politically motivated prosecutions; critics warn dismissals leave accountability gaps and say political power shaped prosecutorial choices, for example through the inability to try a sitting president and through disqualifications that upended the Georgia prosecution [4] [9] [3]. Some outlets emphasize judicial rulings that found legal defects in specific counts; others emphasize prosecutorial decisions grounded in policy and practicality rather than court findings of misconduct [2] [1] [7].
7. Limits of current reporting and what’s not in the sources
Available sources do not mention any federal court decision that dismissed Smith’s cases explicitly for prosecutorial misconduct; they report policy withdrawal and later internal reports claiming sufficient evidence [1] [5]. Sources do not provide a consolidated, count-by-count legal memo explaining which individual counts across every indictment were struck or why beyond the cited examples in Georgia [2] [6]. Readers should treat aggregated totals (like “52 charges dismissed”) as summaries of many different procedural events across courts and not as a single finding of misconduct [2].
8. Bottom line — what was actually “dismissed” on which grounds
Federal charges were dropped by prosecutors citing DOJ policy about prosecuting a sitting president (not by courts finding misconduct) [1] [3]. In Georgia, multiple counts were struck earlier for legal defects and the remaining indictment was dismissed after the original DA’s disqualification and a successor prosecutor’s motion that the case was not workable; reporting treats that as prosecutorial discretion after procedural problems, not a single judicial finding of misconduct that nullified all allegations [2] [7] [6].