Judge Aileen Cannon is asking the Justice Department and Donald Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta to weigh in on the legality of special counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing grand jury activity in Washington, DC, which relates to the obstruction portion of the Mar-a-Lago documents case before her in Florida.
If she dismisses because it has to be filed in DC…they can just file in DC, get a more favorable judge, and have a great reason for why the court must reject Trump’s inevitable change of venue request.
Florida was only picked to avoid change-of-venue requests. It’s not like there is nowhere to legally charge this case.
If she dismisses with prejudice that means the case cannot be re-filed. I’m not sure if that’s something she’s able to do in this case, but that would effectively kill the case completely.
You can’t dismiss with prejudice because of a simple jurisdictional issue like that. “You should have filed it somewhere else, but now you can’t file it anywhere”. Prejudice means that the case has no merit and saying you should have filed it somewhere else indicates it is possibly meritorious.
I don’t think the appeals court will let that stand.
Yeah, dismissing with prejudice would get reversed immediately.