The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will take up an appeal by a Jan. 6 defendant which could result in hundreds of reversed charges from the riot at the U.S. Capitol, including former President Donald Trump.
The justices will review an appeals court ruling that revived charges against three defendants accused of obstructing official proceedings. The charges refer to disrupting Congress’s certification of President Joe Biden‘s 2020 electoral victory over Trump.
SHADOW OF DOUBT: HOW 2020 ELECTION CHALLENGES IN ARIZONA AND GEORGIA ENDED
Former police officer Joseph Fischer was at the Capitol the day of the riot and, after facing criminal charges for his participation, petitioned the Supreme Court to remove one of the several counts he faces, including “obstruction of an official proceeding.”
The charge criminalizes “corruptly” obstructing, impeding, or blocking an official government proceeding and carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Justices will now consider whether the statute under which Fischer was charged, Section 1512 (c)(2) of the United States Code, is the right law to use in his and other prosecutions.
Fischer claims he was only briefly inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 but was nevertheless charged with assault of a police officer, disorderly conduct inside the building, and obstruction of congressional proceedings, among other things.
Trump himself is facing the exact same count in special counsel Jack Smith‘s case, which accuses the 2024 Republican presidential primary leader of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election after his loss. Trump, like the Jan. 6 defendant, is charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Attorneys for the former president wrote in an October filing seeking to dismiss the case that Smith’s indictment inappropriately applied the statute in question to their client. The “indictment takes a statute directed at the destruction of records in accounting fraud and applies it to disputing the outcome of a Presidential election. This stretches the statutory language beyond any plausible mooring to its text,” the attorneys wrote.
The charge in question carries the stiffest penalty available to prosecutors so far in the Jan. 6 cases they’ve brought, and it has also been applied to several notable figures involved in the riot, including Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, leaders of the groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, respectively. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison in September, and Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in May.
The Justice Department has brought the obstruction charge against more than 300 defendants in the sweeping federal prosecutions it has pursued since the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a riot formed at the complex out of anger and frustration during Biden’s election certification.
If the Supreme Court sides with the defendant and discards the obstruction charge, hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants could appeal their convictions and shave years off their sentences. Some are facing the prospect of years behind bars.
The decision to take up this case also could complicate the proposed March 4 trial date in Smith’s case against Trump. For example, convicted defendant Sara Carpenter has already asked to delay her sentencing, which was scheduled for next week, until after the Supreme Court rules in the Fischer case.
Trump has long sought to delay his criminal trials until after the 2024 election and most recently told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to halt proceedings in his case after Smith skipped an appellate court and went straight to the Supreme Court to expedite a dispute over Trump’s presidential immunity claims.
It’s likely Trump could now file a motion asking Chutkan to delay his trial until after the high court has ruled on the Section 1512 (c)(2) challenge. The Washington Examiner contacted an attorney for the former president.
The Supreme Court ultimately agreed to take up the case involving defendant Fischer, who was given the same charge as two other defendants who petitioned the high court, Jacob Lang and Garrett Miller.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Miller has since pleaded guilty to other charges and was sentenced to 38 months in prison, and he could still face prosecution over the obstruction charge. Fischer is from Boston, and Lang is from the Hudson Valley in New York.
The Supreme Court has not set a date for hearing the case but will hear it in 2024 with a decision by the end of June.
