The case Fischer v. United States
Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence.
The court seemed very divided on how broad the government is interpreting the statute. Fischer was a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021. He is arguing that the law was only intended to apply to evidence tampering involving a congressional inquiry or investigation.
The court´s decision will affect some of the charges of 300 other insurrectionist and also some of the charges that Special Council Smith has charged Donald Trump.
The section in contention is 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), enacted as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron scandal. The law makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.”
A federal district the charges arguing that the law only affects evidence tampering, the DC district reversed that ruling and reinstated the charges.
from SCOTUSBLOG
Arguing on behalf of the Department of Justice, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the court to allow the charge to stand. She told the justices that, on Jan. 6, 2021, a “violent mob stormed the United States Capitol and disrupted the peaceful transition of power.” “Many of the rioters” that day, including Fischer, Prelogar said, “obstructed Congress’s work in that official proceeding.” Prelogar argued that Fischer’s interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2) as limited to evidence tampering lacks any basis in the text of the statute.
Justice Kagan was the most reluctant to the defendant lawyer´s (Green) argument:
She told Green that there are two ways to read Section 1512(c)(2) – as prohibiting conduct that “otherwise obstructs a proceeding” or as barring conduct that “otherwise spoils evidence.” Although Fischer suggests that the second interpretation is the correct one, Kagan observed, nothing in the statute supports such a reading. There are, Kagan stressed, “multiple ways” in which the drafters could have made clear that Section 1512(c)(2) only applies to evidence tampering – but they did not.
Chief Justice Roberts seems agreeable to limit the statute
He noted that just last week, in Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries, the court had reiterated that a general catchall phrase at the end of a statute is “controlled and defined by reference to the terms that precede it.” Applied to this case, Roberts contended, it should mean that Section 1512(c)(2) “should involve something that’s capable of alteration, destruction, and mutilation.” That interpretation, Roberts suggested, “responds to some of the concerns that have been raised about how broad (c)(2) is.”
Gorsuch tried to give some hypotheticals using recent newsworthy examples
…asking Prelogar [Solicitor General] whether Section 1512(c)(2) could also apply to a sit-in at a trial, someone who pulled a fire alarm before a congressional vote, or a heckler in the Supreme Court’s gallery.
Prelogar emphasized the high bat of proving “corruption” to charge someone under the statute. (I have to admit that when when I heard the congress fire alarm example I thought “ouch”)
Justice Barrett seems to be angling for the middle
Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that even if the court were to reject the government’s broad interpretation, Section 1512(c)(2) might still apply to Fisher. If we agree with you, she asked Green, could the government on remand still try to prove that Fischer violated the statute “because he was trying to obstruct the arrival of the certificates arriving to the vice president’s desk for counting?”
Green conceded that such a question was a “closer” call, but he maintained that in Section 1512(c)(2) Congress only meant to target conduct that actually changed documents in a way that affected their integrity.
I think SCOTUS will remand back to lower court with a narrower interpretation but charges will remain.