Supreme Court rules for Jan. 6 rioter challenging obstruction charge
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former police officer who is seeking to throw out an obstruction charge for joining the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, in a ruling that could benefit former President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of a former police officer who is seeking to throw out an obstruction charge for joining the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
The justices in a 6-3 vote on nonideological lines handed a win to defendant Joseph Fischer, who is among hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants — including former President Donald Trump — who have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding over the effort to prevent Congress' certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.
The court concluded that the law, enacted in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the Enron accounting scandal, was only intended to apply to more limited circumstances involving forms of evidence tampering, not the much broader array of situations that prosecutors had claimed it covered.
The provision targets anyone who "obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so," but the court determined that its scope is limited by a preceding sentence in the statute referring to altering or destroying records.
Joseph Fischer, second left, inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. District CourtThe court sent the case back to lower courts for further proceedings on whether the Justice Department could still prosecute Fischer under the new interpretation of the law.
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