Regardless of which way he rules, the question of jurisdiction would go to the 4th Circuit.
There are numerous other remedies for faulty jurisdiction, one of which is simply change the prosecutor. Mueller drops it, and USA-EDVA picks it up.
wow so there is no telling what will happen.
Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein gave the special counsel the counterintelligence investigation and also gave them FISA Title-1 surveillance warrant authority; which allowed Robert Mueller to retrieve all communications (e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g) belonging to any person, entity or group, within two-hops of former unofficial campaign aide Carter Page. By extension this covered almost all the campaign officials, and also most of the Trump administration.
This is a critical point often misunderstood. When Mueller was appointed in May 2017, they began a criminal investigation (Title 3) by taking over the FBI counterintelligence investigation (Title 1). By design the counter-intel structure meant the special counsel had access to the entire gamut of active surveillance on almost every official in the Trump Administration; and every official in congress – without having to get a search warrant.
Ordinarily, under U.S. Title-3 criminal statute the investigative body, U.S. Attorney or Special Counsel, would need to go before a judge to swear out the reasoning for a search warrant and prove probable cause. Because the special counsel took Title-1 investigative authority (counterintelligence operation), they subverted domestic search and seizure protections applicable toward U.S. persons having nothing to do with foreign intelligence.
This melding of Title-1 and Title-3 legal authority is essentially what underpins Judge Ellis’s questioning. Judge Ellis began asking, and proving, that a 2005 and 2007 tax and banking case against Paul Manafort had nothing to do with a 2017 counterintelligence investigation about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.