SCOTUS: Biden DOJ Wrongly Charged J6ers

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) improperly charged hundreds of Americans who were present at the protest on January 6th, 2020, with obstruction.

This ruling could result in all charges laid against the 300 Americans to be dropped and could go so far as to affect the obstruction charges former President Trump is facing from the DOJ.

Charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer, Joseph Fischer, who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 protest were tossed out by the Court in a 6-3 vote.

The justices ruled that the law in which Fischer was charged with violating only applies to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings.

This law, cited by the courts, was created over two decades ago in the wake of the Enron scandal which was meant to prosecute persons who tamper with evidence such as the deletion of digital files or the shredding of documents.

SCOTUS says they ruled that this law can only be applied if there is proof the defendant (the 300 Americans) tampered with or destroyed evidence.

The same law is also at the center of two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Trump in Washington, D.C.

According to Chief Justice John Roberts, the government’s expansive construction of subsection (c)(2) of the obstruction law would cause other ramifications, suggesting that it “would criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.”

Upon the case returning to the D.C. Circuit, Justice Roberts gave instructions that the court can reconsider the obstruction charge against Fischer “in light of our interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the Roberts opinion whilst filing a concurring opinion where she emphasized “the shocking circumstances involved in this case or the Government’s determination that they warrant prosecution, today, this 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.”

Meanwhile, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a dissenting opinion.

Attorney General Merrick Garland was “disappointed” by the Court’s ruling, stressing that “the vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision.”

Garland, who is being held in contempt of Congress, says there are no cases in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer.”

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