Justice Department eyeing ways to sustain obstruction cases against Jan. 6 defendants

Federal prosecutors began signaling Monday that they may attempt to salvage dozens of felony cases they’ve leveled against Jan. 6 defendants, even after a Supreme Court ruling seemed poised to upend them.

It’s a sign the Justice Department does not view last week’s ruling from the high court as a blanket rejection of their efforts to apply a 20-year-old obstruction law — a vestige of the Enron financial crisis — against hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol in 2021 in Donald Trump’s name.

The Supreme Court ruled in Fischer v. United States on Friday that the obstruction statute in question was meant to punish the destruction, manipulation or concealment of physical documents in an investigation. Trump and his allies celebrated the ruling as an indication that many of the 350-plus obstruction cases against Jan. 6 defendants could be invalidated, since they weren’t related to the impairment of physical documents.

Justice Alito questions DOJ use of 'obstruction' in Jan. 6 cases

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But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the court’s majority, separately emphasized that prosecutors might still be able to sustain cases against the Jan. 6 defendants because of their role in blocking Congress from accessing the Electoral College ballots to certify Joe Biden’s victory. The Justice Department seems to be weighing her suggestion.

“The Court did not reject the application of [the obstruct law] to January 6,” federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing Monday in the case of Donovan Crowl, a member of the Oath Keepers who is awaiting sentencing for a Jan. 6 obstruction charge. “Rather, the Court explained that the government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records … or attempted to do so.”

More at: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/01/justice-department-january-6-obstruction-cases-00166102