SCOTUS Hands Down Huge Decision Affecting J6 Defendants

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The Supreme Court has taken a judicial katana to a statute that federal prosecutors weaponized to go after those who participated in the January 6 incident. The question before the court was whether the “obstruction of an official proceeding” statute could be used in how the Justice Department weaponized it to go after hundreds of January 6 defendants. As SCOTUS Blog covered in April, the plaintiff, Joseph Fischer, a former police officer, argued that the statute only pertained to evidence tampering in a congressional investigation. During oral arguments, justices weren’t convinced by the government’s interpretation, arguing that it could cast too much of a net.

In a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court handed down a massive blow to federal prosecutors, concluding, per SCOTUS Blog’s Amy Howe, that for the statute to be used in this way, there must be evidence to the fact that “the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records.” In a blow to the narrative that the Supreme Court is rogue and right-wing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the majority. Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented (via SCOTUS Blog):

The court holds that to prove a violation of the law, the government must show that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.

The court reverses the D.C. Circuit, which had adopted a broader reading of the law to allow the charges against Fischer to go forward. The case now goes back to the D.C. Circuit — which, the court says, can assess whether the indictment can still stand in light of this new and narrower interpretation.

Justice Jackson, who joined the majority opinion, also has a concurring opinion. She stresses that despite “the shocking circumstances involved in this case,” the “Court’s task is to determine what conduct is proscribed by the criminal statute that has been invoked as the basis for the obstruction charge at issue here.”

(Read more from “SCOTUS Hands Down Huge Decision Affecting J6 Defendants” HERE)

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