CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court actually held a hearing on if obstruction had occurred during the Jan.6 Insurrection invasion of the Capitol to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential win, and if so, could it be charged.
No ‘oral argument’s’ were heard between Justice Clarence Thomas and his spouse, Ginni, a Trump supporting Jan. 6 enabler and excuser, because they agree. The hearing was yet another galling example why Justice Thomas should recuse himself from all Jan. 6 cases and why the Court’s credibility has sunk to new lows in public opinion polls.
The Court is hearing the appeal of Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer who is seeking to have the ‘obstruction’ charge against him dismissed. It is one of 7 charges brought against Fisher, a former police officer who is also charged with assaulting police on Jan. 6.
Fischer had earlier lost his appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Maybe those judges understood the noose hanging in front of the Capitol on Jan 6 to hang Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi also represented the ‘O’ in obstruction. The Supreme Court seemed to need to hear oral arguments on if a hanging noose really equated with execution by strangulation?
Under the obstruction law in question, it is a crime to obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding. The law was enacted in 2020 following the Enron scandal and carries a max sentence of 20 years.
An example of the oral arguments from the Supreme Court’s conservatives was Justice Gorsuch asking if it meant a hypothetical heckler in the Court’s audience could get charged with obstruction and sentenced to 20 years? Other Justices also seemed preoccupied with the 20 yr. max sentence.
DOJ Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar rebutted the lame hypotheticals by Gorsuch and others with a reality check stating what should have been obvious to them but disturbingly was not.
“I think it’s in a fundamentally different posture than if they [heckler] had stormed into this courtroom, overrun the Supreme Court Police, required the justices and other participants to flee for their safety..”
“The fundamental wrong committed by many of the rioters, including petitioner, was a deliberate attempt to stop the joint session of Congress from certifying the results of the election. That is they obstructed Congress’ work in that offical proceeding.,” said Prelogar
Preglogar also pointed out that the average sentence of defendants convicted on the obstruction charge was 26 months not 20 years.
Of the over 1,300 Jan. 6 defendants, only 150 have been charged with obstruction.
If the Court grants Fischer’s appeal, the 150 Jan. 6 defendant’s convicted on that charge will have to be retried, though many who had other charges attached, like Fischer, would remain imprisoned.
Dismissal of the charge is not expected to impact the cases against Donald Trump much, Though hearing the conservative Justices sounding completely clueless with their hypothetical oral arguments in this obstruction appeal is a frightening forewarning of what may be in store next week in the Supreme Court’s hearing on Trump’s immunity appeal.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Thomas questioned if the obstruction law could be applied if no documents were involved like in the Enron case. The U.S. Constitution is a document, right?