US Supreme Court hears man’s bid to avoid obstruction charge

Washington — The US Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing arguments in a Pennsylvania man’s bid to avoid an obstruction charge related to the January 6 2021 attack on the Capitol — a case with possible implications for the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Joseph Fischer has appealed a lower court’s ruling rejecting his attempt to escape a federal charge of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding — the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump that the rioters sought to prevent. Arguments in the case were ongoing.

Trump faces the same charge in a criminal case brought against him in 2023 by special counsel Jack Smith.

Jeffrey Green, a lawyer for Fischer, argued for a narrow application of the obstruction charge — only against defendants who tampered with evidence. Green argued that the justice department had committed prosecutorial overreach by misapplying an obstruction provision from the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act — passed after the accounting fraud scandal at now-defunct energy company Enron — to Fischer’s case.

Fischer is accused of charging at police officers guarding a Capitol entrance during the attack, according to prosecutors. Fischer, at the time a member of the North Cornwall Township police in Pennsylvania, got inside and pressed up against an officer’s riot shield as police attempted to clear rioters. He remained in the building for four minutes before police pushed him out.

The obstruction charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, though January 6 defendants convicted of obstruction have received far lesser sentences. Federal prosecutors have brought obstruction charges against about 350 of the roughly 1,400 people charged in the Capitol attack.

The legal issue in the case involves how two parts of the obstruction law fit together. The first provision prohibits obstructing an official proceeding by destroying “a record, document or other object.” The second part makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct” an official proceeding.

The justice department argued that Congress included the second provision to give the obstruction law a broad sweep.

“It ensures that unanticipated methods of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding — like occupying the Capitol building and forcing the suspension of Congress's joint session certifying the election results — are prohibited,” US solicitor-general Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a brief.

A Supreme Court ruling dismissing the charge against Fischer could make it more complicated — but not impossible — to make Trump’s obstruction-related charges stick, according to experts.

The Supreme Court next week confronts another major case involving Trump, the Republican candidate challenging the Democratic president in the November. 5 US election in a 2020 rematch. The justices will hear arguments on April 25 in Trump’s assertion of presidential immunity from prosecution in the election subversion case brought against him by Smith.

Fischer is awaiting trial on six other criminal counts, including assaulting or impeding officers and civil disorder, while he challenges his obstruction charge at the Supreme Court.

US district judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, dismissed Fischer’s obstruction charge, ruling that it applies only to defendants who tampered with evidence. The US court of appeals for the district of Columbia circuit reversed that decision, finding that the law under which the charge was brought was not limited to documents and records, instead applying “to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding”.

After the 2020 election, Trump and his allies made false claims that it had been stolen from him through widespread voting fraud. On the day when Congress met to certify Biden’s victory, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, broke through barricades, attacked police officers, vandalised the building, and forced legislators and others to flee for safety.

In August 2023, Smith brought four federal criminal counts against Trump: conspiring to defraud the US, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to do so, and conspiring against the right of Americans to vote. Smith has separately charged Trump in a case involving the retention of classified documents after leaving office.

Trump faces two other criminal cases as well. He has pleaded not guilty in all the cases and called them politically motivated.

Reuters