What federal indictments against Donald Trump were filed before 2025 and how did each case progress through 2025?

1. The Mar‑a‑Lago documents indictment — charges, courtroom fights, dismissal

The documents indictment was unsealed in June 2023 after a Miami grand jury returned a 37‑count indictment (later superseded to add counts), alleging willful retention of national defense information and obstruction of federal officials attempting to retrieve it ^{[5] [1] [6]}. The case was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon and produced a prolonged pretrial battle over the special counsel’s appointment, discovery and classified‑materials procedures; in July 2024 Judge Cannon granted a defense motion and dismissed the case on Appointments‑ and Appropriations‑clause grounds, a decision that halted trial activity ^{[4] [6]}. The Office of the Special Counsel appealed the dismissal, but after Trump’s November 2024 election the Department of Justice moved to withdraw or wind down the appeal and the prosecution, citing DOJ policies about prosecuting a sitting president; by early 2025 appeals regarding co‑defendants were also dropped as the special counsel resigned ^{[7] [3] [8]}.

2. The federal election‑obstruction indictment (Jan. 6) — allegations, superseding indictment, dismissal

In August 2023 a grand jury in Washington, D.C., returned a four‑count indictment charging conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and related counts tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 certification, alleging a coordinated plan to subvert the count of electoral votes ^{[2] [3]}. The special counsel filed a superseding indictment in late August that maintained the core four charges while altering some factual allegations ^[3]. Litigation proceeded in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s court until after the 2024 election, when the special counsel moved to dismiss the case without prejudice under the Department of Justice policy against criminally prosecuting a sitting president; Judge Chutkan approved that request in late November 2024 and the criminal counts were dismissed ^[3]. In January 2025 the special counsel released a report concluding that admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain convictions, but the active federal prosecution had already been halted ^[3].

3. What happened across 2024–2025: appeals, policy, and the special counsel’s exit

Both federal prosecutions were dramatically affected by judicial rulings and the political consequence of Trump’s 2024 victory: the documents case was dismissed by Judge Cannon in mid‑July 2024 on constitutional appointment grounds and the government appealed, while the Jan. 6 case was paused and ultimately dismissed without prejudice after the special counsel invoked the DOJ policy on sitting presidents following the November 2024 election; the Justice Department then wound down appeals tied to those prosecutions and the special counsel subsequently resigned in early 2025 ^{[4] [3] [8] [7]}. Reporting and legal trackers note that the special counsel’s office assessed the evidence as sufficient in at least the Jan. 6 matter even as active prosecution ceased, creating a lingering factual record that could be relevant if charges were ever refiled ^[3].

4. Analysis: competing narratives, institutional motives and limits of public record

Coverage of the federal indictments split along predictable lines: prosecutors and independent legal analysts framed the cases as fact‑driven efforts to enforce criminal statutes, while defenders and many political allies characterized them as politically motivated prosecutions aimed at interfering with a political campaign ^{[2] [7]}; sources here show both the factual prosecutorial assertions and the procedural posture that ended active federal prosecutions through 2025, but they do not resolve broader political claims or future prosecutorial choices, and public reporting does not provide a definitive account of internal DOJ deliberations beyond what the special counsel’s filings and public statements disclose ^{[3] [8]}.