Did Donald Trump win an appeal that resulted in 34 felony counts against him being dismissed? No, that's not true: He won part of an appeal, but in a case unrelated to the 34 felony counts. On Aug. 21, 2025 five judges in a New York appeals court decided to throw out the $500 million penalty, but not the finding of guilt, imposed when Trump was found to have overstated his wealth for financial gain. That business fraud case was separate from a criminal case in which Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to hide payments made to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The meme appeared in a post (archived here) published by Michael Ward in the Facebook group "The Patriotic Meme Bank" on Aug. 27, 2025. The text in the meme reads:
So trump won his appeal against the 34 felony counts you liberals like to throw out. Dropped the 34 charges and got his money back. Notice not one single media site talking about
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post on Facebook)
The post was published Aug. 27, 2025, just days after Trump and the Trump Organization declared a major victory when an appeals court threw out civil fraud penalties in a case in which he was found to have fraudulently inflated his financial holdings.
The meme mixes up the legal record by mentioning 34 felony counts. Those were the convictions from the hush money trial -- and those 34 felony counts have not been thrown out. The hush money case had nothing to do with the New York civil fraud trial, which found that Trump had fraudulently overstated his wealth in financial statements.
On Aug. 21, 2025, the day of this appeals court news (archived here), the Associated Press published an additional article (archived here) titled, "Here's where all the legal cases against Trump stand since his return to the White House". This summary contains a link to a Jan. 29, 2025 article (archived here) announcing that Trump had appealed the hush money conviction. At the time of writing, that appeal is still in court -- so it is incorrect to say that those 34 felony counts have been dropped.
Originally the penalty Trump had to pay in the New York civil fraud case was $454 million. An appeals court allowed Trump to post a $175 million bond on April 1, 2024. Since then, the original penalty, which Trump and the Trump Organization had not paid in full, continued to gather interest ballooning to over $500 million. That penalty has now been dropped, though the appeals court did not strike down the finding that he committed fraud.
A search on Facebook for the text of this meme found an earlier instance (archived here) which was posted as a reel on May 14, 2025. The information in the meme was also false then, as it is now.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post on Facebook)
