Analysis | Supreme Court makes it harder to prosecute Trump on obstruction charges

The indictments – and in some cases, the convictions – of hundreds of people charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, will have to be reconsidered and perhaps even thrown out because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28, 2024 ruling. defendants who benefited from a broad interpretation of the obstruction law now narrowed by the Supreme Court included former President Donald Trump.

In its decision in Fischer v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal statute against obstructing an official proceeding could not be applied to three defendants charged with participating in the Capitol riot. Although former President Donald Trump is not a defendant in that case, special counsel Jack Smith has charged him separately with violating the same statute.

As a law professor who teaches and writes on constitutional law and federal courts, I will explain what the court’s decision means for the January 6 defendants and for Smith v. Trump.

Charges against Capitol rioters

According to their indictments, Joseph Fischer, Edward Lang and Garret Miller were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors say all three men entered the Capitol building and attacked police officers during the riot. One of the men, Lang, brandished a bat and a stolen police shield, and the other, Miller, later called for the murder of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media.

Federal prosecutors have charged the three men with various crimes, including assaulting a federal officer, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and obstructing a congressional proceeding. This last allegation is the subject of an appeal by the Supreme Court.

Before the trial, the defendants argued that the law prosecutors used to charge them with obstruction of justice only covered tampering with evidence, not violently disrupting a congressional proceeding. The district court agreed and dismissed the charge, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the conviction and sent the case back for a new trial.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but stayed the hearing until the dispute over the scope of the obstruction of justice statute was resolved.

Definition of the general term

In a 6-3 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court agreed with the defendants and ruled that the statute only prohibited tampering with evidence. He then sent the case back to the appeals court to decide whether the defendants violated the law under this narrower interpretation by trying to prevent Congress from receiving and certifying the states’ true electoral votes.

The court began with the text of the obstruction law. The law punishes anyone who “alters, destroys, mutilates or conceals records, documents or other objects” or who “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding.” The government argued that the defendants “otherwise obstructed” congressional proceedings to certify the results of the 2020 election.

However, the court rejected this argument, ruling that the phrase “otherwise obstructs” refers only to obstruction that, such as altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or item, impairs the availability or integrity of evidence for use in an official proceeding. The court explained that the general outline of the law regarding “otherwise obstructing” an official proceeding must be read together with the list of actions that precede it. Otherwise the list would be redundant.

The court also noted the historical background of the law. Congress, the court explained, enacted the specific obstruction law in 2002 in the wake of the Enron accounting fraud scandal. It was intended to fill a loophole in the nation’s existing obstruction laws, which at the time prohibited directing a third party to destroy incriminating evidence but not destroying it yourself.

The court explained that the government’s interpretation of the law goes far beyond its purpose by prohibiting forms of obstruction that have nothing to do with evidence and that Congress never intended to criminalize.

What this means for the January 6 defendants – and for Trump

The Supreme Court decision does not end the case against the Fischer defendants, who are expected to stand trial on assault and disorderly conduct charges.

However, it could lead to the dismissal of obstruction of justice charges or the overturning of obstruction of justice convictions for other defendants from Jan. 6. Federal prosecutors have charged at least 250 other defendants with obstruction of an official proceeding, and 128 of them have been convicted, according to an NPR database.

The ruling could also undermine special counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Donald Trump, whom Smith has accused of obstruction under the same law. If that case survives a separate, ongoing Supreme Court appeal, the former president is likely to seek to have that charge dismissed.

Trump may not succeed, however, because the election obstruction charge against him is based in part on the allegation that he organized voter rolls to certify false election results to Congress. This may mean a violation of the integrity of the evidence used in the certification procedure.

The obstruction charge is not the only one the former president faces. But the ruling could narrow the case and make it harder for a special counsel to present evidence to a jury about the violence that occurred on Jan. 6. Violence alone cannot be considered obstruction, according to the new ruling.

Fischer also illustrates how, sometimes, especially in high-stakes cases, judges can use methods of legal reasoning that they are quick to criticize in other contexts. In their opinion, members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cited the legislative history of obstruction laws—evidence that conservative legal scholars such as the late Justice Antonin Scalia have often called unreliable.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Fischer case could have a profound impact on the special counsel’s historic prosecution of former President Trump.

But even if that doesn’t happen, it still sheds important light on the inner workings of the court and the federal government’s power to protect the integrity of its proceedings.

Riley T. Keenan, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Richmond

This article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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