December 14, 2023
The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case that could impact the prosecution of hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th and possibly delay or even reduce the number of charges former President Trump is facing in his federal elections interference case in Washington DC.
So – yeah – it’s a big deal and I’m going to tell you how this may apply to Trump in a second but first. You need to understand the actual case.
The Supreme Court will hear Fischer vs United States in the next few months. Fischer is Joseph Fischer a former police officer who was charged with assaulting a police officer, disorderly conduct in the capitol and obstructing an official proceeding because of his actions on January 6. It’s that last charge obstructing an official proceeding that Fischer is trying to have dismissed.
A federal district court judge agreed with Fischer and said the charge should be dropped, but an appeals court reversed that ruling and reinstated the charge. Now the Supreme Court will decide.
The issue according to Fischer is – the obstructing an official proceeding charge is wrongly applied to his case. The statute which carries a 20-year penalty if convicted — criminalizes any effort to corruptly obstruct, influence or imped any official proceeding doesn’t apply to him. The provision was actually signed into law back in 2002 in the aftermath of the Enron accounting scandal and Fischer says it was originally meant to apply to evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding or destroying documents and the Justice Department is using it incorrectly to apply to his alleged actions on January 6th.
But the Justice Department says this law is broad enough to cover lots of types of obstructions. In Fischer’s case the DOJ says the statue also says it’s illegal for a defendant to obstruct an official proceeding by physically blocking it from occurring. The Justice Department says that’s exactly what Fischer and others did on January 6th.
But this case is going to have much bigger implications not just for Fischer and others who were physically at the capitol on January 6th but also for the former president and his federal criminal election interference case in Washington DC. In that case – special counsel Jack Smith has brought four criminal charges against Trump. Two of those four are based on this same obstruction charge. So – if the Supreme Court says the Justice Department is improperly using the obstruction charge then it’s possible those two charges against Trump could be dropped. A move like that would — in essence gut the special counsel’s case against him. And even if the Supreme Court doesn’t rule that way – just the fact that they’re taking this issue up could further delay Trump’s trial start date.
The Supreme Court will hear Fischer’s case this term. A ruling will also come sometime before the term ends in June.
