by Julie Kelly
In a devastating but well-deserved blow to the Department of Justice’s criminal prosecution of January 6 protesters, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned the DOJ’s use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2), the most prevalent felony in J6 cases.
The statute, commonly referred to as “obstruction of an official proceeding,” has been applied in roughly 350 J6 cases; it also represents two of four counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Washington.
In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the “c2” subsection is tethered to the “c1” subsection that addresses tampering with a record, document, or “object.”
From the opinion:
Roberts was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the dissent (!) joined by Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
Today’s decision means hundreds of Americans have been wrongfully prosecuted by Attorney General Merrick Garland as he insists his department is dedicated to upholding the “rule of law” and pursuing justice “without fear or favor.”
An Irreversible Black Eye for DOJ and Federal Courts in Washington
The matter originated in the case of Joseph Fischer, a Pennsylvania man who attended Trump’s speech and later went to the Capitol. According to court documents, Fischer briefly entered the building around 3:25 p.m., nearly an hour after the joint session of Congress to certify the electoral college votes had recessed. He exited about four minutes later.
In March 2021, a D.C. grand jury indicted Fischer on numerous counts including 1512(c)(2). The statute reads:
Whoever corruptly—
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.
It is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Fischer, in addition to many J6ers facing the count, asked his judge to dismiss the charge. Judge Carl Nichols, appointed by Trump, dismissed the count against Fischer and two other defendants by finding the language in the post-Enron/Arthur Anderson statute covered tampering with records or documents not interrupting a meeting of Congress. The DOJ appealed Nichols’ decision.
In December, SCOTUS granted Fischer’s petition to grant cert seeking to reverse the appellate court’s mandate. Oral arguments were held on April 16.
Nichols is the only judge to have dismissed the count; 18 district and circuit court judges in Washington refused to dismiss the count. The judges essentially enabled the Biden DOJ’s unlawful pursuit of Americans who protested Biden’s election that day.
The List of Shame:
- Judge Beryl Howell (Obama, former chief judge)
- Judge James Boasberg (Obama, current chief judge)
- Judge Rudolph Contreras (Obama)
- Judge Trevor McFadden (Trump)
- Judge John Bates (GW Bush)
- Judge Amit Mehta (Obama)
- Judge Dabny Friedrich (Trump)
- Judge Royce Lamberth (Reagan)
- Judge Richard Leon (GW Bush
- Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (Clinton)
- Judge Amy Berman Jackson (Obama)
- Judge Timothy Kelly (Trump)
- Judge Randolph Moss (Clinton)
- Judge Paul Friedman (Clinton)
- Judge Christopher Cooper (Obama)
- D.C. Circuit Court Judge Florence Pan (Biden)—Pan wrote both appellate court decisions upholding 1512c2
- D.C. Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker (Trump)
- D.C. Circuit Court Judge Cornelia Pillard
There Goes Your Summer, Your Honor
The federal courthouse in Washington has been bracing for a flood of motions post-Fischer; a few judges have released individuals from prison in anticipation of a reversal. Roughly 110 J6ers have been sentenced to prison on 1512(c)(2) convictions; several J6ers were held under pretrial detention for being charged with the nonviolent obstruction count alone.
But despite the law’s legal limbo over the past year, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee, continued to indict J6ers on 1512(c)(2) while some judges continued to sentence those convicted to lengthy prison terms. Last month, Beryl Howell, the former chief judge who upheld the 1512(c)(2) charges for defendants in her courtroom, sentenced a Missouri man to 60 months in prison for the 1512 conviction and assault on police.
In January 2022, Howell gave the green light for her colleagues to support the DOJ’s use of the obstruction count. Here is what she said in denying a motion to dismiss filed by two J6ers:
“For over 200 years, the peaceful transition of power from one presidential administration to another has been marked with Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote; and this event has been respectfully observed by American citizens, but not on January 6, 2021. And I start with this historical fact because what happened on January 6th was a chilling new type of criminal conduct to which our criminal laws have never before had to be applied. Application of criminal laws to conduct never before seen, like what occurred on January 6, 2021, appropriately generates the kind of legal questions the defendants raise here about whether the criminal law fits the charged criminal conduct.”
The first judge to uphold the obstruction charge in J6 cases was Trump-appointee Dabny Friedrich. In 2021, she agreed that interrupting a meeting of Congress met the definition of “official proceeding” and that the statute’s broad language did not require the government to prove the conduct involved tampering with records or documents.
Ironically—or not—Friedrich is married to Matthew Friedrich, a former DOJ official who worked on the Enron Task Force alongside Andrew Weissman and current deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco. The 1512(c)(2) statute was a product of the Enron/Arthur Anderson investigation; Weissmann, as the lead prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the bogus Russiagate probe, pushed the DOJ to charge Trump with 1512(c)(2) while in office.
Retired judge Thomas Hogan recently warned how a SCOTUS’s reversal of 1512(c)(2) would affect the DC courthouse. Here is Hogan, who upheld the statute in J6 prosecutions, with former DOJ official and FISAgate mastermind Mary McCord.
Reacting to the SCOTUS decision, Geri Perna, aunt of Matthew Perna, told me this by email:
“When Matthew was unexpectedly charged with the felony of Obstruction of an Official Proceeding—after initially facing only misdemeanors—his world collapsed. The weight of a potential lengthy prison sentence bore down on him, filling his days with insurmountable worry and anxiety. At that time, there was no glimmer of hope that this severe charge would be dropped.
Matthew has now been dead for 28 months. In the wake of his passing, the Supreme Court of the United States is finally set to rule on whether the Department of Justice wrongfully applied 1512(c)(2) in January 6 cases. As much as I am hopeful for a just ruling in favor of the January 6 defendants, I am consumed by a profound sense of loss and anger. My nephew’s death was both avoidable and senseless.
I feel cheated, and if that sounds selfish, then so be it. The pain of losing Matthew under such circumstances is a burden I carry every day. I fervently hope that those responsible for wielding this charge erroneously will be held accountable in a court of law. However, I am not holding my breath.”
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Julie Kelly is an independent journalist covering the weaponization of the U.S. Government against her citizens, Follow Kelly on Twitter / X.
Photo “January 6 Riot” by Tyler Merbler. CC BY 2.0.
