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 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.
Edit: I am by no means a… law… talking… guy, so it’s good to hear from multiple replies that this is most likely not an out for Tr(eason)ump.
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.
If she has the authority to do so, there’s nothing that an appeals court can do about it. Once a case is dismissed, that’s the end of it.
You can appeal a dismissal just like any other final judgement.
Even if she did it wouldn’t stick on appeal and it would only affect the new charges. The original indictment was from a grand jury in Miami.