WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday in favor of a suspect charged Jan. 6 with obstructing an official proceeding has quickly led to a reconsideration of that charge in other cases involving Capitol rioters, but it is unlikely this will derail the former US president. Donald Trumpfederal election interference case.
Justice Department officials and attorneys for the defendants said Jan. 6 that the court’s 6-3 ruling in the case involving former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer would have no immediate effect on most of the more than 1,000 convictions imposed by prosecutors.
The court’s decision is expected to have the greatest impact on the 52 rioters who were convicted and punished on one charge of obstruction and no other serious offense. There are currently 27 suspects serving a prison sentence on an obstruction charge alone.
“There are no instances in which the Department has charged a January 6 defendant solely with the crime at issue in the Fischer case,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday.
All suspects charged with obstruction of justice also faced other charges; the 52 charged only with obstruction of justice also faced misdemeanors related to efforts to disrupt Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.
Garland went on to say that while he was “disappointed” with the Supreme Court’s decision, the Justice Department “will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the attack on our democracy on January 6.”
One defendant who is unlikely to suffer much from Friday’s decision is Trump. His election interference case is based on a charge of obstruction of justice.
Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, said on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House that he didn’t expect it to affect the case at all.
“I don’t think it will have any effect on the January 6 indictment against Trump,” Weissmann said.
Sara R. Fitzpatrick, an attorney following the Fischer case, agreed that the decision “clearly” has no bearing on special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump, which has been stayed until the Supreme Court rules Monday on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity.
“The decision essentially limits Section 1512(c)(2) to conduct that in any way falsifies evidence or tampers with any other document or object used in an official proceeding,” Fitzpatrick said. “The law would still apply to people who are accused of doing something with a document that is involved in that certification, and one of the things that President Trump is accused of doing is working to create false election certificates and having them used in place of the real election certificates.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case.
At a campaign rally on Friday, Trump praised the court’s ruling.
“They have been waiting for this decision for a long time. They waited a long time, and that was a great answer. That was a great thing for people who have been treated so terribly,” Trump told his supporters in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Applications for other suspects from Jan. 6 began coming in Friday. Robert Turner, who was convicted of obstruction and a series of charges including two other crimes — civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or obstructing officers — after a jury trial this month, asked a judge to grant a motion to acquit because of Fischer’s ruling.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Friday stayed a trial scheduled for July 22 after prosecutors along with defendant William Pope filed a motion on Jan. 6 to delay the case following the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Both parties are evaluating the decision, which affects the indictment, presentation of evidence and jury instructions at trial in this case,” the joint filing said.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich took a proactive approach Friday by asking prosecutors and defense attorneys in three Jan. 6 cases involving convicted and sentenced defendants to propose a schedule for further proceedings on the impact of the ruling, noting that the defendants would have new sentencing hearings. Those defendants were Guy Reffitt — the first Jan. 6 suspect to appear in court — who was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison in August 2022; Ronald Sandlin, who filmed himself attacking officers and breaking into the Senate chamber and was sentenced to five years in federal prison in December 2022; and Jacob Travis Clark, who was sentenced to 33 months in prison in October 2023.
Friedrich also suggested she would likely drop obstruction charges against the Jan. 6 suspect, Zachary Alam. Alam used his helmet to smash windows leading into the House Speaker’s lobby moments before rioter Ashli Babbitt was shot dead. Alam was due to be sentenced next month after being convicted on a number of charges last year. Friedrich also asked both sides to submit documents on the impact of the Fischer case ruling on Alam’s sentencing guidelines.
Supporters of the January 6 defendants and attorneys who represented them in court responded positively to the Supreme Court’s ruling, although they acknowledged that it was complex and its ultimate impact had yet to be determined.
“Open the prison gates!” joked a lawyer representing the January 6 suspects, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who represented dozens of Capitol riot defendants, said the implications of the Fischer decision will be complicated.
“This will not necessarily resolve matters in the way that some seem to expect,” he said.
“You’ve never had a situation like this before,” he said. “I am not aware of any previous circumstance where hundreds of people have been charged with the same crime for the same events, only to have the Supreme Court say it was wrongly applied, and all of those cases need to be reviewed at the same time. . In that sense, it is far from clear how this will turn out.”
Shipley said there would be many defendants behind bars right now who would be affected by the decision and would want to be released on bail until all the fallout can be resolved. But he also said there were risks for some defendants in seeking help.
“There are going to be cases where the defendant pleaded guilty to one charge, and the government dismissed all the other charges. Well, the government can re-appeal all those other charges,” Shipley said. “The government has a 99.9 percent conviction rate, what do they have to fear? They have nothing to fear by going back, re-appealing, and re-applying more charges. So there’s a real decision to be made by some of these defendants whether it’s worth it to try to get away from their crimes.”
On the other side of the issue, Justice Department officials say that while the Supreme Court decision will have an impact, it will not upend their work or approach to prosecution.
“It is not the death knell for our efforts, as some claim,” one law enforcement official told NBC News.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
