Supreme Court narrows use of obstruction charge in Jan. 6 cases, affecting Trump and hundreds of other defendants
The US’s top court Friday moved to potentially upend scores of Jan. 6 riot prosecutions — including one involving Donald Trump — by narrowing the charge of obstructing an official proceeding.
The high court, in a 6-3 decision that deviated from ideological lines, said there must be proof that the defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents to warrant the charge.
The charge has been used in more than 300 prosecutions involving the Capitol riot, but only some of the defendants were accused of actually tampering with official papers or other items, potentially paving the way for them to be cleared of the rap
Two of the four criminal charges against Trump involving the Jan. 6 riots revolve around this obstruction statute — and his lawyers are expected to use Friday’s ruling to try to have them tossed.
Trump posted “BIG WIN!” on his Truth Social site after the ruling.
But special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump in the case, has already claimed that even if the Supreme Court issued such a ruling, it would not affect the charges against the GOP presidential nominee.
Trump still faces two unaffected charges: conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiracy against rights.
Either way, Trump’s case remains in limbo for now, pending a decision from the Supreme Court on his bid for presidential immunity. A ruling on that is expected Monday.
At issue in Friday’s case was a technical reading of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the Enron accounting fraud scandal and is used as the basis for the official obstruction rap.
The act lays out criminal liability for that anyone who “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”
The Supreme Court was hearing the case of Pennsylvania resident Joseph Fischer, a former police officer who was charged with obstructing an official proceeding during the Jan. 6, 2021, rioting at the US Capitol.
Fischer’s lawyer argued that he didn’t necessarily destroy material during the riots, as the language of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act stipulates he must do to warrant the charge.
The high court instructed the lower courts to reevaluate Fischer’s case based on its majority opinion.
“The Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Roberts was joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and four other conservative justices.
In her concurrence with the majority, Jackson effectively argued that prosecutors can’t broaden the scope of the statute even when responding to national emergencies.
“Our commitment to equal justice and the rule of law requires the courts to faithfully apply criminal laws as written, even in periods of national crisis,” she wrote.
“There is no indication whatsoever that Congress intended to create a sweeping, all-purpose obstruction statute.”
Jackson contended that the ruling doesn’t preclude Fischer from facing charges under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act — but that that still has to be determined.
“It might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding,” she said.
“If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand.”
The other two liberals on the bench joined Justice Amy Coney Barrett in dissent.
Barrett countered that the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021, was an official proceeding, which still opened the doors for prosecutors to deploy that charge.
“Given these premises, the case that Fischer can be tried for ‘obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding’ seems open and shut,” she wrote. “So why does the Court hold otherwise? Because it simply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said.”
Barrett argued that the high court “does textual backflips to find some way” to narrow the scope of the charge.
More than 1,426 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 ransacking of the Capitol, according to a tracker from The Associated Press.
