Trump's DOJ Tried to Drop a $265 Million Bribery Case, Then Gave the Judge an Ultimatum

An Ultimatum in Place of Facts

On May 18, 2026, Trump's Justice Department asked a federal judge to end permanently every charge in the prosecution of Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire, and his co-defendants, a case alleging approximately $265 million in bribes.¹² One official made the decision, and the judge described it as made largely with defense lawyers.¹ One of them, Robert Giuffra, represents Adani and is also Trump's personal attorney.¹ Asked for facts to justify dropping the bribery and obstruction charges, the department sent the judge a deadline instead.³

The indictment charged eight defendants in five counts.¹ It alleged that the bribes were paid for Indian solar-energy contracts, that almost $4 billion in financing was secured while the payments were concealed, and that evidence was destroyed and false information supplied to obstruct U.S. investigations.¹ Those are allegations as the judge summarized them, not findings of guilt or a calculation of investor losses.¹

Once a grand jury has returned an indictment, prosecutors need a judge's permission to drop it.⁴ The department's motion explained itself in one paragraph: it had decided "not to devote further resources" to the charges.⁴ On June 26 Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered DOJ to state each reason and the facts supporting it.⁴

On August 10 Garaufis gave the department part of what it asked. He permanently dismissed the three fraud counts, the ones against Adani and two co-defendants, on the one ground he found supported.¹ He reserved the other two until DOJ supplied facts: a foreign-bribery conspiracy charge against five other defendants and an obstruction conspiracy charge against four of those five.¹³

R. Trent McCotter, the official who had made the decision, answered the next day with a deadline: dismiss by August 25 or he would seek appellate relief.³ His August 11 letter supplied no new reasons or facts; his August 14 letter swore to his previous explanations without curing the omissions.³

On September 3 Garaufis refused to dismiss the charges against the five remaining defendants, because DOJ had not supplied the facts needed to evaluate its reasons.³ The denial is without prejudice, meaning DOJ may return with evidence.³ Judicial review of a dismissal, he wrote, is "a critical check on Executive power" that helps guarantee the equal administration of justice.³

A Dismissal Built Largely With Defense Lawyers

Garaufis found McCotter was the sole decisionmaker.¹ Only McCotter and U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella signed the motion; nobody involved in bringing the charges signed it.¹ Nocella later swore that McCotter directed him to sign and that he was not the decisionmaker.¹

Giuffra's firm, by his account, sent the department approximately 600 pages in ten weeks; McCotter learned the case, the judge wrote, with "tremendous help" from the fraud defendants' lawyers.¹ Garaufis described the decision as made largely with defense counsel and seemingly without input from the investigators and attorneys who brought the case, which he wrote "appears to be highly unusual."¹ DOJ's own manual instructs U.S. attorneys to consult referring agencies and seek investigators' views before dismissal, and says an indictment should not be dropped merely because a defendant is a fugitive.⁵

McCotter said he spent well over 100 hours reviewing and debating the defense materials, also met separately with department lawyers, and conducted his own research and analysis.¹

By McCotter's own account, a May 14 New York Times report disclosed the planned fraud dismissal before he could fully review the foreign-bribery charge, and lawyers for the other five defendants then told him they would oppose it unless the bribery charge was dismissed too.¹ He continued his review, including in several meetings with defense counsel, and four days later asked to dismiss the entire indictment.¹ The order also recorded a separate May 18 OFAC settlement, the same day as the motion: Adani Enterprises agreed to a $275 million payment to resolve civil liability for apparent Iran-sanctions violations without a finding of fault, although OFAC characterized its conduct as egregious.¹

The policy McCotter invoked began with an order Trump signed. On February 10, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14209, directing a review of existing foreign-bribery cases and new enforcement guidance.¹ Todd Blanche, now Trump's attorney general, issued that guidance on June 9, 2025, and McCotter later invoked it to seek dismissal of the foreign-bribery charge.¹⁶ McCotter was named to a senior department post on April 9, 2026, while Blanche was acting attorney general; by August 11 he was acting deputy attorney general.¹³

The August order also cited, in its background account, Bloomberg reporting that Adani met Donald Trump Jr. as early as November 2025; the court did not find that those reported meetings influenced the dismissal, and Trump's personal direction of it has not been established.¹

For the wider pattern, see the site's [justice](justice.article.html) and [clemency](clemency.article.html) articles.³

The Strongest Defense Won the Fraud Dismissal

The department's strongest defense is that prosecutors may drop a case they judge weak, and the fraud theory had a weak point.¹ McCotter argued that the anti-bribery assurances in the financing documents were general corporate statements, not specific promises investors could reasonably rely on.¹ Garaufis agreed that a court could treat those statements as too general to support fraud charges.¹ That possibility, he found, weakened the prosecution and was a substantial reason for dismissal, supported by enough facts.¹ He also expressly found the statements insufficiently material to sustain the wire-fraud charges.¹

DOJ won that part of its request.¹ Garaufis said the ruling was neither agreement with DOJ's decision nor an opinion on the merits of the case.¹ It dismissed the three fraud counts against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain with prejudice, so they cannot be brought again.¹ The same order recorded a separate proposed SEC settlement: Gautam and Sagar Adani agreed to $18 million in civil penalties and injunctions against certain future U.S. securities-law violations, in consent judgments submitted for court approval.¹

Giuffra also twice raised Adani Group's willingness to invest $10 billion in the United States as part of a resolution.¹ Nocella "categorically rejected" the proposal, and Garaufis, after reviewing declarations and correspondence, accepted that it had not influenced McCotter's decision.¹ Garaufis also accepted McCotter's stated reasons as his real reasons for seeking dismissal; he separately tested whether the record supplied sufficient facts to support them.¹

Indian Decisions Did Not Clear the Charged Conduct

McCotter offered six general reasons to dismiss every count: the case's foreign character, Indian investigations, no investor losses, an accusation that the prior administration unsealed the indictment to burden its successor, proof problems and absent defendants.¹ Garaufis found none sufficiently supported by facts.¹ He wrote that McCotter offered no evidence of a political motive and that his "baseless assertion is unbecoming of his office."¹

One reason failed against DOJ's own exhibits.¹ McCotter said India had investigated allegations and found no actionable misconduct.¹ Garaufis found that the three Indian decisions appeared instead to decline investigations, addressed substantially different allegations, and said nothing about the alleged lies to U.S. investors or destruction of evidence and lies to federal officials in New York.¹

McCotter also asserted that investors had lost no money; Garaufis found that unsupported and observed that foreign bribery and obstruction do not require financial loss.¹

McCotter separately argued that the foreign-bribery charge failed Blanche's guidance, issued in response to Trump's directive with the stated goal of protecting American economic and national-security interests and prioritizing serious misconduct.¹ Garaufis found that under the guidance the alleged bribes appear to present an urgent threat to U.S. national security and that the allegations matched several of its priorities (substantial bribes, concealed payments, fraud and obstruction).¹ McCotter's explanation, he concluded, contradicted the guidance as applied to them.¹

On obstruction, Garaufis found that McCotter focused on the defendants' hiring of expensive lawyers and failed to address the actual allegations of deleted evidence, withheld information and false statements.¹ McCotter's refusal to meet the rule's requirements even after the court's clear direction, he wrote, "evinces a lack of respect" for the judiciary as a co-equal branch.¹

Tyler's Firing and Where the Case Stands

Andrew Tyler and Shy Jackson, two department lawyers involved in bringing the indictment, withdrew two days after the May 18 motion.¹ NBC News independently reported that the administration later fired one of them.⁷ CBS News identified him as Tyler, fired September 8.² Two sources attributed his removal to alleged ethical violations without providing details; another disputed that account, alleged retaliation for his withdrawal and said his termination letter cited Article II without giving a reason.²

As of October 10, 2026, DOJ had asked to end five counts and ended three.¹³ MLex reported on October 1 that the Second Circuit refused to speed review of DOJ's petition to force the remaining dismissal.⁸

The charge is abuse of prosecutorial power.¹³ A senior official, working largely with defense counsel that included Trump's personal lawyer, tried to extinguish the whole prosecution and resisted the factual scrutiny required for the remaining counts.¹³ A supported fraud dismissal did not entitle DOJ to erase separate bribery and obstruction allegations on unsupported assertions.¹³ The fraud charges ended without a trial; the rest survived only because a judge required facts.¹³ Trump is accountable for the enforcement policy he signed and for the Justice Department his appointees lead.¹⁶