WASHINGTON – A former Pennsylvania police officer involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that delayed the certification of the 2020 presidential election results cannot be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding unless a lower court finds otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The ruling raises questions about the Jan. 6 cases of potentially hundreds of defendants facing the same charges, as well as part of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
But Attorney General Merrick Garland said following the ruling that he expected the decision would not affect the “overwhelming majority” of January 6 cases.
In a 6-3 OpinionThe judges, led by Chief Judge John Roberts, wrote that the charge against Fischer – a subsection of an obstruction of justice law from the early 2000s – could only be applied to tampering with physical records.
“To prove a violation of section 1512(c)(2), the government must show that the defendant compromised or attempted to compromise the availability or integrity of any records, documents, objects, or, as we have previously explained, other things used in the proceeding for use in an official proceeding,” Roberts wrote.
“The judgment of the DC Circuit is therefore reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” Roberts wrote.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a concurring opinion.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented.
Impact on January 6 defendants, Trump
The ruling has the potential more than 355 The defendants on January 6 were charged with the same crime, which carries a fine and a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Dozens, including Leader The extremist “Proud Boys” and “Oath Keepers” have already been convicted of these charges, according to the Justice Department.
The case, Fischer v. United States, centered on whether the January 6 defendant, Joseph W. Fischer, violated the Obstruction of Justice Act when he joined the mob that breached the U.S. Capitol and prevented Congress and Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, which declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner.
Trump is also charged with obstruction of justice as part of his four-count indictment. claims He worked with others to overturn the election results in seven states, pressured Pence to join him, and incited his base into a frenzy that culminated in the January 6 attack.
Trump will almost certainly contest the charges, as his legal team has already argues he is completely immune to it.
Trump lawyers D. John Sauer and William Owen Scharf did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Instead, Steven Cheung, Trump’s 2024 campaign spokesman, responded to the email with a link to Trump’s post on his social media platform Truth Social. The post, published at 11:41 a.m. Friday, read “BIG WIN!”
The trials of those involved in the January 6 riots have become a rallying cry for Republicans in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Trump, the likely Republican nominee, has repeatedly promised to pardon the accused.
Louisiana House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Friday that the Supreme Court’s decision “effectively means that the court agrees that the charges against a number of the defendants in the January 6 trial were too high.”
“And I think that’s something that many people have recognised for some time, and now the highest court in the land has declared it that way,” Johnson said during a comprehensive press conference.
This is how the allegations came about
The disability provision examined by the Supreme Court is contained in Section 1512(c) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Actwhich was enacted following the Enron accounting scandal of 2001. The scandal broke out after it was revealed that the energy company had falsified its financial records to escalate its value.
The provision is directed against “anyone who corruptly (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals, or attempts to do so, a record, document, or other item with the intent to compromise the integrity of the item or its availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or prevents, or attempts to do so, an official proceeding.”
Fischer, hundreds of other defendants in the Jan. 6 case, and Trump are accused of violating subsection two, cited in court documents as 1512(c)(2).
Important time in April Oral statements revolved around the question of whether the second part of the law depends on the first part, meaning that the law can only be applied when physical evidence is involved.
The government argued that they were two different parts and that Fischer, who sent text messages in the run-up to the riots and is seen on police camera footage at the Capitol, intended to disrupt an official session of Congress.
Fischer’s team argued that he did not enter the Capitol until Congress had already adjourned the proceedings and that he did not stay there very long.
A lower federal court agreed to Fischer’s motion to dismiss the charges last year.
A federal appeals panel in Washington, DC, did not do so. Judge Florence Y. Pan – who also sat on the panel during Trump’s presidential election Immunity complaint — wrote in the introduction Opinion that the law is “clear” in its interpretation of what constitutes an obstruction of an official proceeding.
Additional fees
The allegation of obstruction of justice is not the only charge brought against Fischer following his participation in the January 6 riots.
The original accusation The charges against him included causing a riot, assaulting, resisting or obstructing certain officers, entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Fischer’s lawyer Jeffrey Green, who spoken He was personally at the States newsroom after April’s oral argument and told the editors in an emailed statement on Friday that his team was “ecstatic.”
“The various opinions provide a particularly clear insight into the differing interpretations of the Court’s current justices. And the impact of the opinion on other prosecutions remains to be seen, but we are pleased to have brought this criminal statute back to its original terrain of evidence tampering,” wrote the Bethesda, Maryland-based attorney.
Frederick “Fritz” Ulrich, a public defender for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and Fischer’s attorney, told States Newsroom in a written response on Friday that the Supreme Court “interpreted the scope of 1512(c) consistent with the intent of Congress and our reasoning that it is an obstruction of evidence offense and not a form of a general obstruction of evidence offense.”
“And ultimately, the government has enough criminal charges to cover the conduct at issue. As for Mr. Fischer, the D.C. Circuit should ultimately remand the case to the district court for a trial,” Ulrich wrote.
DOJ reacts
In a statement on Friday, Garland said he was “disappointed” by the court’s decision, which he said “limits an important federal law that the Department sought to ensure that those primarily responsible for this attack face appropriate consequences.”
However, Garland does not expect the ruling to affect a significant portion of the hundreds of cases brought on Jan. 6, he said.
“The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision. There are no cases in which the Department has charged a January 6 defendant solely for the offense at issue in Fischer,” Garland continued.
The ministry will “take the appropriate steps to comply with the court ruling” in all affected cases, he said.
“We will continue to use every tool available to hold those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy accountable,” Garland said.
He described the unrest as “an attack on the cornerstone of our system of government – the peaceful transfer of power from one government to the next.”
Majority of judges questions government’s claim
Writing for the majority on Friday, Roberts disagreed with the Justice Department’s position that the two parts of the obstruction of justice statute could be applied entirely separately.
“While the government’s all-encompassing interpretation may be literally permissible, it runs counter to the most plausible understanding of why (the two subsections) are connected,” Roberts wrote.
(*6*) he wrote, citing the federal appeals court’s dissenting opinion. Opinion by Judge Gregory Katsas.
In her concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Jackson wrote that the Supreme Court “correctly interpreted” the law and “properly vacated the judgment in the division and remanded the case for further proceedings.”
Jackson wrote that when Congress certified the results of the January 6, 2021 presidential election, “clearly certain records, documents, or items were used – including, but not limited to, those relating to the electoral votes themselves.”
“And it may well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved interfering (or attempting to interfere) with the availability or integrity of items used during the January 6 proceeding ‘in ways other than those specified in (c)(1),'” she wrote, citing the first subsection of the obstruction of justice statute.
“If so, then Fischer’s prosecution can and should proceed under §1512(c)(2). That question is left to the lower courts to decide the matter after remand,” Jackson concluded.
In her dissent, Barrett argued against the majority’s “narrowing” of the subsection.
“There is no getting around it: Section 1512(c)(2) is a far-reaching statute,” she wrote.
When Congress drafted the law, it “set the outer limits of liability,” she continued.
“[T]”The executive branch has discretion to select, within these limits, certain cases to prosecute. By narrowing the scope of Section 1512(c)(2), the Court has disregarded the prerogatives of the political branches,” Barrett concluded.
Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.
