In ruling against the Department of Justice’s weaponization of the law to target political opponents, the Supreme Court just shot down two of special counsel Jack Smith’s four charges against former President Donald Trump — but the fight isn’t over.
The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision Friday in Fischer v. United States that found the DOJ inappropriately used federal statute 18 U.S. Code § 1512(c) to prosecute individuals involved in the Jan. 6 riot. The statute carries a 20-year prison sentence for anyone who “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.
The statute has been, as my colleague Tristan Justice explained, “the basis for keeping many protesters in jail without bond for months or even years before they reached trial.”
“It’s never before been used in the way the DOJ has applied it to Jan. 6 protesters,” Justice continued.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, warned that the DOJ’s broad interpretation of the statute to charge more than 300 defendants with felonies “would criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.”
And while the Supreme Court’s ruling would surely mean that two of the charges against Trump are illegal, President Joe Biden’s DOJ has
