The Supreme Court will hand down a key ruling on January 6th
Fox News contributors Jonathan Turley and Andy McCarthy appeared on “America’s Newsroom” to discuss the Supreme Court’s most recent decision and the justices’ thoughts on why obstruction laws don’t apply.
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of defendants who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and were challenging their convictions on federal “obstruction” charges.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld a narrower interpretation of federal law, which imposes criminal liability on anyone who fraudulently “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the integrity or availability of the object for use in an official proceeding” a record, document, or other object.
The ruling overturns a lower court decision that the high court said was too broad, including into areas such as peaceful but disruptive activity, and sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which will have a chance to reevaluate the case with Friday’s ruling in mind.
The case stems from a lawsuit filed by Joseph Fisher, one of more than 300 people charged by the Department of Justice with “obstruction of justice” in the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. His lawyers argued that the federal law should not apply and has only previously been applied in evidence tampering cases.
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A mob of supporters of President Donald Trump rallied at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Department of Justice They argued that Fischer’s actions were a “deliberate attempt” to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying the 2020 election in person, which would allow them to use a law that makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct, influence, or impede, or attempt to do so, any official proceeding,” with a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
But Chief Justice John Roberts said the government was over-applying the law.
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“While the government’s sweeping interpretation may be acceptable literally, it runs counter to any plausible understanding of why certain provisions of the statute were put together and renders vast swaths of the statutory language merely redundant,” Justice Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion.
To prove that a defendant is guilty of “obstruction,” the government must demonstrate that “the defendant impaired, or attempted to impair, the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of a record, document, object, or other object used in the proceeding, as described above,” Roberts wrote.
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Friday, June 28, 2024, U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, DC. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In her concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that “while this case involves shocking circumstances…this Court’s task is to determine what conduct is prohibited by the criminal statutes cited as the basis for the obstruction charges in this case.”
“Joseph Fisher is charged with violating § 1512(c)(2) by improperly obstructing a congressional proceeding, specifically the Congressional certification of the electoral votes. … That official proceeding apparently involved the use of certain records, documents, or items, including those related to the electoral votes themselves. … And, as alleged herein, Fisher’s conduct likely involved impairing (or attempting to impair) the availability or integrity of those used during the January 6 proceeding ‘in ways other than those specified in (c)(1)’.”
“If so, then section 1512(c)(2) charges can and should be brought against Fisher. This issue will be up to the lower court to decide on remand,” she wrote.
Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a dissenting opinion, arguing that it is Congress, not the Supreme Court, that gives the executive branch broad discretion to determine limits on federal obstruction laws. (Associated Press)
“There is no room for evasion: Section 1512(c)(2) is a broad statute. But Congress, not this Court, weighs the pros and cons of whether a statute should be broad or narrow,” Barrett wrote. “Once Congress defines the outer limits of responsibility, the executive branch has discretion to selectively prosecute certain cases within those limits. By uncharacteristically narrowing Section 1512(c)(2), the Court has disrespected the power of the political branch.”
Attorney General Elizabeth Preloger faced a number of tough questions from the justices during oral arguments in April.
At one point, Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned whether hecklers at the State of the Union address or the recent incident in which Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) set off a fire alarm to distract from a House vote constituted “disruption,” as the government argued.
“There are several factors [statute] “I think those assumptions may not be met,” Preloger replied, adding that sabotage requires “meaningful interference” and “bad intent.”
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Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Judge Preloger on a 2019 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which serves as legal counsel to the Justice Department and other executive branch agencies, which said obstruction of justice laws should be interpreted narrowly and were inconsistent with the Justice Department’s position in the case.
Preloger said the opinion was never “formally” adopted, but he couldn’t say what the process is for the Justice Department to formally accept an OLC document.
Because the Supreme Court concluded that lower courts interpreted the directive too broadly, the case was sent back to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to determine whether the obstruction portion of the lawsuit against Fisher, and potentially the Jan. 6 defendants, can move forward under a new, narrower legal standard.
The Department of Justice must decide now whether to drop obstruction charges against defendants who face other criminal charges related to January 6, or wait until the courts have fully resolved this issue. For defendants who were charged only with obstruction charges under this statute, the Department of Justice must decide now whether to drop the charges in their entirety.
