The Supreme Court may hand Donald Trump and January 6 rioters a legal lifeline
Jim Vondruska/Getty Images; AP
- The Supreme Court is taking on a case challenging a charge that many Jan. 6 rioters — and Trump — face.
- The case hinges on whether rioters could be prosecuted for criminal "obstruction" of Congress.
- The court's ruling could have implications for Donald Trump and hundreds of January 6 defendants.
The US Supreme Court accepted a case on Wednesday that could be a legal lifeline for former President Donald Trump's DC election interference case.
The case, Fischer v. US, challenges a law that makes it a crime to obstruct or impede an official proceeding — a charge that has been levied against hundreds of January 6 defendants accused of storming the capitol in 2021, interrupting Congress's formal certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election win.
Trump himself has been hit with the obstruction charge — one of four charges against the former president in special counsel Jack Smith's DC election interference case.
The Supreme Court agreed to take up a case relating to January 6 defendant Joseph Fischer, who was charged with obstructing an official proceeding when he allegedly participated in the Capitol riot.
A lower court judge ruled that the obstruction charge did not apply to Fischer because he had not taken "some action with respect to a document, record or other object," Reuters reported.
But, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit disagreed with that judge's ruling, arguing in a split decision that the judge had too narrowly applied the obstruction law with his "cramped, document-focused interpretation," the Washington Post reported.
If the Supreme Court sides with Fischer, it could upend the obstruction charges against Trump and hundreds of rioters, many of whom have already been convicted.
One of Trump's lawyers, Will Scharf, said the case was a "huge deal" for the former president.
The law's "applicability to alleged obstruction of the electoral count process has been hotly contested since the start of the January 6 prosecutions, and the DC Circuit split sharply on the issue," Scharf posted on X (formerly Twitter.)
Meanwhile, SCOTUS' decision to take up the case has already started to snarl existing trials. In one Captial rioter's case first spotted by Politico's Josh Gerstein, she has already asked the court to delay sentencing until the Supreme Court makes a ruling