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Updated on: August 10, 2026 / 6:00 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal fraud charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and several of his co-defendants, after politically appointed leaders in the Justice Department decided to kill the case in May.But in an unusual twist, U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis for the Eastern District of New York refused to dismiss two of the counts against five other co-defendants, saying the Justice Department had failed to provide him with a sufficient reason for doing so.In a scathing 47-page ruling, Garaufis took aim at Trent McCotter, the principal associate deputy attorney general, who he said bears sole responsibility for trying to dismiss the case."The irregularities in the decision to dismiss the indictment are concerning," Garaufis wrote. "On the current record, McCotter appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment. The fact that McCotter came to this decision largely in collaboration with defense counsel, and seemingly without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the alleged misconduct, or the attorneys from the Department, SEC, and U.S. Attorney's Office who brought the case, appears to be highly unusual."The high-profile foreign bribery case against Adani was brought at the tail end of former President Joe Biden's tenure, and it managed to survive even after President Trump ordered the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to conduct a review into all of their pending foreign bribery cases.But after Adani retained Bob Giuffra and Jamie McDonald of Sullivan & Cromwell, the Justice Department in May moved to dismiss the case entirely.
