The Patriot Post® · January 6 Trials Just Got More Complicated
The Supreme Court may be poised to upend not only one trial of Donald Trump but also the charges brought against more than 300 January 6 defendants.
The case at hand is Fischer v. United States, which the justices agreed on Wednesday to hear. To sum it up, a small-town Pennsylvania police officer named Joseph Fischer was part of the crowd that entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. According to Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog, he “was charged with (among other things) assaulting a police officer, disorderly conduct in the Capitol, and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.”
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and he has even challenged the obstruction charge now all the way to the Supreme Court. That charge stems from a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 18 U.S. Code 1512, which states, “whoever corruptly otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
Fischer argues the law criminalizes only destroying records or evidence tampering in order to obstruct or impede official proceedings. His presence in the Capitol doesn’t qualify, he says, and the justices will now rule on it.
More than 300 people — roughly a quarter of all J6 defendants — have been charged under the same law, meaning the Court’s ruling could affect the 152 people already convicted and the others still awaiting trial.
That’s also true of Trump, who likewise has been charged with two felonies under the same law by Joe Biden’s hatchet man, special prosecutor Jack Smith. Trump faces a total of 89 other charges in four indictments.
Regarding Fischer’s case, Claremont Institute senior legal fellow Tom Caso marvels that the law has “never been applied in this particular manner before.” He points to Code Pink and other congressional protesters who obstruct hearings and proceedings as a matter of course. “Why have they never been prosecuted under this statute?” Caso asks. “They are obviously trying to impede an official proceeding. It’s kind of strange that the statute is only now been discovered.”
Until you realize that the whole January 6 fiasco has been kind of strange from start to finish.
By the way, Smith just asked the Supreme Court Monday to expedite a ruling on Trump’s argument that he’s immune from prosecution, but unless the Court does likewise in Fischer, Trump’s March 4 court date could be delayed. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan hinted at that Wednesday when she said that with Trump’s immunity appeal pending at the Supreme Court, she now lacks jurisdiction. Her order “automatically [pauses] any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant.”
It sure would be a real shame (sarcasm alert) to allow Super Tuesday to happen the next day without Trump stuck in court dealing with election interference from left-wing hacks like Smith and Chutkan.
The Democrats’ entire charade of prosecuting Trump by throwing the legal kitchen sink at him has, as designed, made him even stronger in the GOP presidential primaries. Democrats still insist they beat him in 2016, and after beating him in 2018, 2020, and 2022, they’d love to do it again in 2024.
That calculation may badly misfire if Biden somehow remains the nominee, or if Trump wins some key cases in court. On top of that, the prosecutions of hundreds of J6 defendants might end up being undone because Democrats just couldn’t help but grossly overreach due to their blinding rage hatred of the former president. That would be a great blow against two-tiered justice.