Was Trump's felony charges dropped
Executive summary
Yes — some of the felony charges against Donald Trump were formally dropped, but the picture is fragmented: Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss the two federal criminal prosecutions (the classified-documents case and the federal election-interference case) in late November 2024, and a separate Georgia state racketeering indictment was later abandoned by the Georgia prosecutor in November 2025, while other state-level matters followed different paths [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Federal cases: a prosecutor voluntarily asked to dismiss, not an acquittal
In November 2024 Special Counsel Jack Smith filed motions asking courts to dismiss his two major federal prosecutions of Trump — the documents case and the 2020-election interference case — citing longstanding Department of Justice policy against prosecuting a sitting president and the fact of Trump’s election, which made continuation while Trump would be president impracticable; Smith requested dismissals “without prejudice,” meaning the government said it still believed the charges had merit even as it paused them for now [1] [5] [2].
2. The New York conviction: separate and not simply “dropped”
The widely circulated claim that all 34 felony counts from Trump’s New York conviction were dropped is false; court filings after the 2024 verdict showed prosecutors intended to proceed with post-trial sentencing and that the Manhattan case was not simply wiped away by his election — fact-checkers flagged social posts that misrepresented that outcome [6] [2].
3. Georgia: a state case ended after prosecutorial turnover and recusals
The sweeping Fulton County racketeering indictment accusing Trump and others of trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 results was effectively ended when the prosecutor who ultimately took the matter — after the county DA was disqualified or left the case — declined to pursue the charges and dropped the indictment in late November 2025, a move reported as closing the last remaining criminal case tied to those events in Georgia [3] [4] [7].
4. Legal technicalities matter: “without prejudice,” statutes and immunity questions
When federal charges were dismissed at Smith’s request, they were largely characterized as without prejudice, leaving open the theoretical possibility of re‑indictment after Trump leaves office, but that prospect is constrained by legal hurdles such as the statute of limitations and competing legal opinions about presidential immunity and DOJ policy; Smith’s final report asserted the dismissals were driven by the political reality of a new presidency rather than a judgment that charges lacked merit [5] [1].
5. Politics, optics and the competing narratives
Different actors frame these dismissals to suit political ends: Trump and allies called the moves vindication of claims the cases were politically motivated, while prosecutors and some legal observers emphasize procedural and institutional limits — DOJ policies, Supreme Court rulings on immunity, and timing — as the reasons for pausing or dropping prosecutions rather than any wholesale exoneration [1] [5] [2].
6. What remains true and what reporting does not settle
Reporting sourced here establishes that major federal prosecutions were dropped at the special counsel’s request and the Georgia case was later dismissed by state authorities, but sources do not establish that every criminal allegation against Trump across jurisdictions has been permanently or uniformly extinguished; several matters were resolved differently (convictions, appeals, dismissals), and questions about whether charges could be refiled or are time‑barred remain complex and fact‑specific [1] [4] [6] [5].