The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case that could both have an impact on Donald Trump’s J6 case and on hundreds of J6ers that the DOJ prosecuted and put in jail.
At issue is a 2002 law that the DOJ has been using to prosecute those who were involved in or who were there during the Capitol riot.
According to Bloomberg News…
The US Supreme Court added a new complication to the prosecution of Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as the justices agreed to hear an appeal from a Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendant facing a related charge.
The justices said Wednesday they will decide whether Joseph Fischer can be charged under a 2002 law that grew out of the Enron Corp. collapse for obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors have also invoked that law against Trump, as well as in 300 other Capitol riot cases.
Supreme Court involvement could give Trump new grounds for arguing for a delay that could push back his March 4 federal court trial in Washington until after the 2024 presidential election. Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
The decision to hear the appeal comes two days after the special counsel pressing the charges against Trump asked the justices to decide on a fast-track basis whether the former president is entitled to absolute immunity. The justices could decide as soon as next week whether to immediately review a judge’s ruling rejecting Trump’s immunity claims.
Fischer was allegedly part of the group that forced Congress to delay its certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Fischer contends the Justice Department is overstretching a provision in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was designed to outlaw the destruction of corporate documents in cases of financial wrongdoing.
The provision authorizes as much as 20 years in prison for a person who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object” with the intent to undermine an official proceeding. A second prong applies to anyone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.”
Marina Medvin, a defense attorney who has dealt with J6 cases, gives us her own take:
SCOTUS just granted certiorari to the US v. Fischer case on the proper interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).
This is the 20-year penalty felony offense for Obstruction of Congress that the DOJ has been charging J6 defendants (and convicting them of) even without most of the people charged having done anything other than enter the building — which should instead be charged as a misdemeanor. (Some defendants also committed assaults and other acts, and they are charged accordingly with the corresponding code section for that conduct. This charge is different.)
If the case turns in favor of the defendants, this will be life-altering for hundreds of people who were unjustly persecuted for a felony offense instead of the misdemeanor that was crafted by Congress for the trespass behavior at issue.
An appeals court just ruled that this Enron law can be applied to J6ers. So I think it might be a good sign that the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case.