Judge Dismisses Adani Case — But Slams Doj Official’s ‘highly Unusual’ Conduct

A federal judge slammed a senior Justice Department official’s conduct as “highly unusual” and “unbecoming of his office” in a ruling allowing the Trump administration to drop part of a criminal case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.

In a 47-page ruling on Monday, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis agreed to dismiss three of the five counts against Adani in an alleged bribery scheme, reserving judgment on two of the counts due to what Garaufis described as the Justice Department’s failure to meet certain procedural requirements.

In his decision, the judge sharply criticized the arguments and conduct of Trent McCotter, the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, writing that he “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,” Garaufis wrote.

McCotter’s failure to comply with the procedural requirements “evinces a lack of respect for the Judiciary as a co-equal branch,” the judge wrote.

And in response to McCotter’s contention that the indictment was brought in the waning days of the Biden administration simply to “name and shame” Adani, Garaufis wrote: "McCotter appears to be accusing officials across four different government offices of bringing a detailed 54-page, 5-count indictment out of spite. However, he has not provided a scintilla of evidence to suggest that the timing of the unsealing of the Indictment, or the charging decisions, in this case was politically motivated. McCotter's baseless assertion is unbecoming of his office. It is also inconsistent with this court's experience."

Asked for comment on Garaufis’s criticism, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, Kiersten Pels, pointed to a July court filing from McCotter in which he said he made the decision to dismiss after consultation with both defense counsel and in meetings with only department counsel, “and after conducting my own research and analysis.”

Prosecutors and regulators had alleged in late 2024 that Adani and several of his associates orchestrated “a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from U.S. investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements.”

According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly paid more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar energy supply contracts that were likely to bring in billions of dollars in profits. Adani and the other defendants, prosecutors alleged, then hid that scheme as they sought to raise funds in the U.S.

DOJ’s May filing asking the judge to drop the case included the signatures of McCotter and the Brooklyn U.S. attorney, but didn’t list the names of any of the line prosecutors working on the case, a notable omission possibly indicating their lack of support for the decision.

After Trump took office for his second term, Adani hired a team of lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, the same firm Trump had hired a few months earlier to represent him in multiple personal legal matters, a fact the judge noted in his ruling Monday.