By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skepticism on Tuesday about the Justice Department’s obstruction charge against a Pennsylvania man in the 2021 Capitol attack, a case with possible implications for the Donald Trump’s prosecution for trying to overturn his 2020 decision. election loss.
The justices heard arguments in Joseph Fischer’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling dismissing his attempt to escape a federal charge of obstructing the corruption of an official proceeding: Congress’s certification of President Joe’s victory Biden over Trump that rioters tried to prevent on January 6, 2021. .
Trump, the Republican candidate who will challenge the Democratic president in the November 5 US election in a 2020 rematch, faces the same charge in a criminal case brought against him last year by special prosecutor Jack Smith.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Some conservative justices asked Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar tough questions about the Justice Department’s enforcement of an obstruction provision in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law — passed after the accounting fraud scandal at the now-defunct energy company Enron – to Fischer’s case.
“We have applied it in a number of court cases that do not focus on tampering with evidence. Now I cannot give you an example of how it was applied in a situation where people violently broke into a building to prevent an official proceeding , a specified,” Prelogar told conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.
Prelogar added that he was not aware of any circumstances like this ever occurring before the attack on the Capitol.
Jeffrey Green, an attorney for Fischer, argued for a narrow application of the obstruction charge, only against defendants who tampered with evidence. Green said the Justice Department overreached by misapplying Sarbanes-Oxley’s obstruction provision to Fischer’s case.
“The January 6 indictment demonstrates that there are a number of felonies and misdemeanors covering the alleged conduct. A Sarbanes-Oxley-based, Enron-driven evidence tampering statute is not one of them,” Green told the judges.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed concern about how a broad interpretation of the law could cover numerous other actions, including nonviolent protests, pointing to the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
“Would a sit-in disrupting a trial, or entry into a federal courthouse, qualify? Would a heckler in today’s audience (at the Supreme Court) qualify, or the State of the Union address? Pulling a fire alarm before a valid vote?” Gorsuch asked Prelogar.
The liberal justices challenged Green’s narrow interpretation of the law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared it to a sign posted in a theater that says, “‘You will be ejected from the theater if you photograph or record actors, or otherwise disrupt the show.'”
“If you start yelling,” Sotomayor said, “I don’t think anyone would question that you could be expelled under this policy, even if yelling has nothing to do with photography or recording.”
Justice Elena Kagan told Green that there were “many ways” that lawmakers who drafted the relevant text in the statute could have made it clear that they intended the law to operate “only in the sphere of evidence spoliation. But that’s not the case “. Do that.”
“Certainly the statute could be written more precisely,” Green said. “Any statute could be written more precisely.”
“It’s not a question of ‘precisely,’” Kagan told Green.
According to the indictment, Fischer is accused of charging police officers guarding the entrance to the Capitol during the attack. Fischer, then a member of the North Cornwall Township police in Pennsylvania, walked in and pressed himself against an officer’s riot shield as police attempted to chase away rioters. He remained in the building for four minutes before the police pushed him out.
“A VERY DIFFERENT ACT”
“Trying to stop the counting of votes or something like that is a very different act than actually changing a document or altering a document,” Green said.
The obstruction charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, although defendants convicted of obstruction on Jan. 6 received much shorter sentences. Federal prosecutors have filed obstruction charges against about 350 of the approximately 1,400 people charged in the attack on the Capitol.
The legal question in the case concerns how the two parts of the obstruction law fit together. The first provision prohibits obstructing an official proceeding by destroying “an act, document or other object”. The second part makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct” an official proceeding.
Prelogar argued that Congress included the second provision to give broad scope to the obstruction law. According to Prelogar, this ensures that unforeseen methods aimed at corruptly obstructing an official proceeding – such as occupying the Capitol and forcing the suspension of the joint session of Congress certifying the election results – are prohibited.
Experts say a Supreme Court ruling dismissing the charges against Fischer could make it more complicated — but not impossible — to enforce Trump’s obstruction-related charges.
In August 2023, Smith filed four federal criminal charges against Trump: conspiracy to defraud the United States, corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to do so, and conspiracy to undermine Americans’ right to vote.
Fischer is awaiting trial on six other charges, including assaulting or obstructing officials and civil disorder, while contesting his obstruction charge in the Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, dismissed Fischer’s obstruction charge, ruling that it applies only to defendants who tampered with evidence. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed that decision.
The Supreme will hear arguments on April 25 in favor of Trump’s presidential immunity in the election subversion case brought against him by Smith.