A Judge Threw Out the Adani Bribery Case — Then Spent 47 Pages Taking the Justice Department Apart

A federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed the criminal fraud case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani on Monday at the Justice Department's own request, and used a 47-page opinion to say, at length, that he did not believe the reasons the department had given him.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York granted the government's motion as to Adani and several co-defendants. He did not grant all of it. Garaufis refused to dismiss two counts against five other co-defendants, finding that prosecutors had not offered enough justification to wipe those charges away.

The case originated in a 54-page, five-count indictment charging Adani — whose conglomerate operates airports, seaports and power plants across India — and associates in an alleged foreign bribery scheme. In May 2026 the Justice Department moved to abandon it. The motion came after Adani retained defense lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, and reporting on the case has described a defense pitch to the department that disputed the strength of the bribery evidence and cited a pledge to invest $10 billion in the U.S. economy.

Garaufis focused his criticism on Trent McCotter, the principal associate deputy attorney general who signed off on the dismissal. McCotter, the judge wrote, "appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment." The process, Garaufis found, was "highly unusual": the decision was worked out largely in collaboration with defense counsel, while the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission investigators who had built the case were left out of it.

The judge was blunter still about the department's stated rationale, which questioned the motives of the prosecutors who brought the indictment. "McCotter appears to be accusing officials across four different government offices of bringing a detailed 54-page, 5-count indictment out of spite," Garaufis wrote, noting that the claim came without supporting evidence.

The case had already survived one culling. President Trump ordered a review of pending foreign bribery prosecutions early in his term, an initiative that paused or ended a number of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters; the Adani indictment was not among the first casualties. Its eventual dismissal lands amid warming U.S.-India commercial relations and a Justice Department that has grown markedly less enthusiastic about prosecuting overseas corruption.

Under federal rules, prosecutors need a judge's leave to drop charges, a requirement designed precisely to give courts a check on politically convenient dismissals — though in practice judges rarely refuse. Garaufis largely did not refuse either. What he did instead was write down, in detail and on the public record, how the decision was made, leaving the surviving counts against five defendants as the only part of the case still standing.