I have been saying this for years. Now, someone else, with more expertise, is saying it. My column today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Bruce Ledewitz: Donald Trump should not have been charged with a crime

Special to the Post-Gazette

Dec 15, 2025

4:30 AM

Many Americans are frightened by President Donald Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department. Trump has ordered federal prosecutors to pursue his political enemies in selective prosecutions and baseless cases. If Trump is not stopped, he will destroy constitutional democracy and the rule of law.

But Trump can only be stopped under the principle that political considerations never can enter into prosecutorial decisions. Trump and his supporters claim that they are doing nothing more than what was done to them during the Biden Administration.

The Nov. 26 dismissal of all remaining criminal charges against Trump and his supporters in the Georgia 2020 election interference case, at the recommendation of the prosecutor, Peter Skandalakis, supports Trump’s assertion.

No proof of crime

Skandalakis is a career prosecutor. He served 25 years as an elected Republican district attorney.

Since 2018, he has been the Executive Director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. That non-partisan office was tasked with finding a new prosecutor after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was removed from the case because of a romantic relationship she had with the special prosecutor she had chosen.

The underlying case had been brought against Trump and 18 others alleging a conspiracy to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. Skandalakis assigned the case to himself when no other prosecutor was willing to take it. 

He could have simply let the case expire. But he filed a motion to dismiss because the public had a right to know why the case should not go forward.

Skandalakis did not doubt that Trump lost the 2020 election and then pressed false claims that there had been wide-spread fraud that changed the election result. Skandalakis concluded, however, that there was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt of any crimes.

Skandalakis began his motion with the Georgia fake electors. After the 2020 election, people in seven battleground states that Trump lost, including Pennsylvania, submitted their names as alternative electors. These electors were part of an organized scheme to convince Vice-President Mike Pence, who formally received the votes, to reject the certified electors from these states and substitute the alternative electors who would then cast their votes for Trump.

Skandalakis found no criminal intent. The electors believed their actions were legally justified in the event Trump won a pending lawsuit challenging the election result in Georgia.

Lying is not necessarily criminal

Another part of the case alleged that three attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, Ray Stallings Smith III and Robert David Cheeley, had made false statements to the Georgia legislature about the 2020 election.

Skandalakis found that the statements were in fact “wrong and baseless,” but noted that they were not made under oath. There was no precedent in Georgia for criminal charges based on unsworn legislative testimony.

As for the charges against attorneys in the case who advised Trump that he could legally overturn the election results, Skandalakis concluded that “flawed legal advice” should be a matter for attorney discipline in their respective states and noted that some of the attorneys involved had already been disciplined. Giuliani, for example was disbarred in New York and D.C.

The most important part of the motion to dismiss involved Trump’s actions. Skandalakis recommended dismissal of the charges against Trump both because the U.S. Supreme Court had held him to be largely immune from prosecution and election interference should be pursued at the federal level.

These kinds of technical arguments drive Trump opponents crazy. The feel the Republican-leaning Supreme Court let Trump off the hook and then his reelection killed the rest of the ongoing federal prosecution.

So it is important to note that Skandalakis also recommended dismissal of the charges against White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for the well-known call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which both Meadows and Trump participated. That phone call was a crucial part of the criminal allegations against Trump.

In that phone call, Trump insisted that there had been election fraud in Georgia and that Raffensperger should “find” the missing votes to make Trump the winner. Skandalakis concluded that the call could have represented a corrupt scheme by Trump to manufacture votes, but could just as easily be interpreted as a sincere attempt by Trump to prevent fraud from wrongfully allowing Biden to win the state.

Equally plausible interpretations

You don’t bring criminal charges when a non-criminal interpretation of the facts is equally plausible.

But that means Trump also should not have been charged. And, although Skandalakis does not expand his analysis to events outside Georgia, the same could be said about almost all of the claims against Trump, including his incitement of the crowd on Jan. 6. 

Trump told the crowd to “fight like hell,” but did not say to attack the Capitol. Trump could have sincerely believed the election was stolen and that Pence could be influenced by a large demonstration to reject the election result.

Skandalakis is no MAGA frontman. Here we have a professional prosecutor telling us that Trump and his supporters should not have been charged. The next time you complain about Trump’s prosecutions today, you would do well to remember that.

Bruce Ledewitz is professor of law emeritus at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University and a contributing writer for the Post-Gazette. He writes every other Monday. His previous article was “Federal judges should not make political speeches in private.”

First Published: December 15, 2025, 4:30 a.m.