The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it will review charges brought against former President Donald Trump and hundreds of J6 protestors. The charge they are looking at is obstruction of an official proceeding. This has been wielded like a cudgel by our left-wing government, and it doesn’t appear to a non-lawyer as a legitimate interpretation of the law’s intent.
The high court’s review will examine an appellate court’s ruling against three protestors accused of obstructing the certification of Electoral College votes by Congress, the AP reports.
Four similar charges have been brought against President Trump by Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
The federal law known as 1512(c)(2) has been used against more than 300 J6 protestors and represents half of Smith’s case against President Trump.
A decision by the court could have significant implications for the March 4th, 2021, start date for President Trump’s trial. The Supreme Court has already agreed to review Trump’s claim of presidential immunity from prosecution. A lower court rejected the President’s claim.
A different lower federal court ruled that the obstruction argument against the three J6 protestors could not apply to their conduct. That led to the Supreme Court taking up the case. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its bounds to fit their argument, concluding that an obstructer must take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object.”
More than 1,200 people have been prosecuted with charges stemming from J6 with more than 650 defendants pleading guilty.
The case Fischer v. United States concerns Jeffrey Fischer who was inside the Capitol building on J6. There were other charges, but this is the one the Court wants to interpret.
Fischer sought to have the charge at the center of his Supreme Court case dismissed, and U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols agreed. He reasoned that the law, which was enacted in the wake of the Enron collapse, was only intended to apply to evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding.
To give you another example of how it was used. Take the case of Paul Hodgkins
Mr. Hodgkins pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or twice the monetary gain or loss of the offense. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 19 at 10 a.m.
According to court documents, Paul Hodgkins, 38, of Tampa, Florida, entered the U.S. Capitol building at approximately 2:50 p.m. on Jan. 6. Around 3 p.m., Hodgkins entered the Senate chamber, walked among the desks, and then removed eye goggles. He took a “selfie-style” photograph with his cell phone and walked down the Senate well where, a few feet away, several individuals were shouting, praying, and cheering using a bullhorn. Hodgkins walked toward the individuals and remained standing with them while they continued commanding the attention of others. At approximately 3:15 p.m., Hodgkins exited the Senate chamber and the U.S. Capitol Building.
A federal district judge sentenced him to eight months in prison. It was a trespassing charge made into a disruption of a congressional proceeding.
MASSIVE news out of the Supreme Court this morning.
The Court will hear Fischer v. United States, a January 6 case challenging the scope of section 1512(c)(2), which criminalizes obstruction of an official proceeding. Two of the four charges President Trump faces in his DC case… pic.twitter.com/8R8GmudItA
— Will Scharf (@willscharf) December 13, 2023
If the government wants to get you, there’s a law on the books to cover it. We have laws on the books since the 1700s. They are almost never removed, which is a serious problem since they lay open to manipulation.
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