Home » SCOTUS will be hearing a J6 case

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SCOTUS will be hearing a J6 case — 17 Comments

  1. ” I’d like to believe that SCOTUS will do the right thing and rule that the law is being misapplied here, and is so vague as to make it possible to charge people for almost any protest.”
    _______

    Fear not. Roberts will come up with a way to chicken out.

  2. No doubt a dozen or more of the thousands of charges have merit.

    Families have been intentionally destroyed by the government of our United States.

    The prosecutors and judges responsible should be ashamed of themselves, rather than proud. I imagine them at cocktail parties with their peer group basking in their filthy glory.

  3. The fact that DOJ had to stretch to a post-Enron criminal statute (based on shredding of documents) in order to reach a 20-year penalty for whatever these J6 defendants were doing in or around the Capitol tells us all we need to know. This is not the way that criminal law should be invoked and energized by the prosecution. If other criminal statutes more naturally fit with the activities in question, the prosecution should be content with those. But they wanted to coerce guilty pleas using the leverage of rest-of-your-life sentencing. A-holes.

  4. It’s another residual clause. Shouldn’t “otherwise obstructs” be related to doing something to an “object” like everything else in (c)(1)?

    (c)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,
    shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512

  5. I’d like to believe that SCOTUS will do the right thing and rule that the law is being misapplied here, and is so vague as to make it possible to charge people for almost any protest.

    –neo

    I’m willing to be surprised. Like Roe v. Wade being overturned. Of course that took 50 years.

    I believe things are changing, but I don’t know if it’s fast enough for our J6 friends.

    Fingers crossed.

  6. Lamberth failed to issue a warrant for moussaoui which could have cracked the 9-11 plot

    Beryl howell gave hillary more running room than la guardia

  7. The J6 political prisoners really need our support, and prayers. I pity them, and wish they got as much attention as that lesbian women’s basketball player did when she was imprisoned in Russia for violating their drug laws.

  8. We are late-Rome, and Beria’s quote reminds me of Tacitus’ quote, “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws”.

    And I wonder, did Tacitus mean that corrupt legislators multiplied laws because they were all a bunch of control freaks trying to create utopia?

    Or because the population was becoming ever more lawless as they saw how the elites behaved?

  9. And if I had the standing and ability, I’d like to sue the DOJ on behalf of the J6 defendents on the basis of the 6th amendment, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial…”

    Considering the volume of cases in which highly likely criminals get off on technicalities on other grounds, why shouldn’t ALL the J6 defendents be excused on this ground alone?

    Speedy, my ass!

  10. Neo linked to a RCI post by Julie Kelly (“More here”) which is probably the most complete analysis of the legal nuts-and-bolts, mostly because she has been working this beat since the beginning.
    https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/01/untested_legal_imagination_is_the_mother_of_prosecution_vs_trump_and_the_january_sixers_989276.html

    A salient excerpt:

    Washington Post legal affairs columnist Jason Willick warned in April that the Fischer case “could make American politics even worse.” Willick criticized the DOJ for rejiggering the obstruction law at a time of heightened political tension. The country does not need, Willick wrote, “a new, open-ended grant of power to prosecutors to reach into the political system,” one that could be used in the future against “interest groups and officials who fall out of favor with the president’s Justice Department.”

    This is the tangled legal and judicial system in the nation’s capital that now awaits Donald Trump: a quick-trigger jury pool deciding the merits of a dubious charge as federal judges widen the utility and interpretation of a law written to close a loophole related to corporate interference in criminal investigations.

    Also:

    While touting the Fischer decision as a win for Jack Smith, Andrew Weissmann, lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation, admitted the Supreme Court could find “some part of the decision to be inapplicable.” Nonetheless, Weissmann said it would be a “stretch” for the Supreme Court “to find that all of those judges were wrong, and the D.C. circuit was wrong.”

    It’s been known to happen.

  11. “It’s been known to happen.”

    Especially considering that the “astute” and “professional” “analysis” was made by that Master of Moral Turpitude, the incomparable, ethically decrepit Andrew Weissmann….

  12. Quoting from above: “otherwise…influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

    I don’t see how a DC jury with a DC judge doesn’t sentence Trump to 20 years in jail under this clause in a few months. It seems like he is dead to rights. Even if they can’t prove his speech was an attempt to impede the certification of the election, they can certainly “prove” to said DC jury that it was an attempt to influence it.

  13. python – Trump’s best defense is legal. The “otherwise” has to tie back to the previous subsection, which is all about tampering with or destroying evidence. So “otherwise . . . influences, or impedes” would have to relate to another way of tampering with or destroying evidence. If “corruptly . . . influenc[ing]” a government proceeding is a crime, then you could put 75% of Washington in prison – “corruptly” is a very slippery element and most of Washington influences government proceedings in some way.

    The problem is that the judge has accepted the prosecutor’s broad reading of the statute so that will be the basis of the trial. Trump’s arguments about the statute will have to wait for appeal, or until the disposition of the J6 cases that the SC just took because the DOJ is using the same statute in the same way against those defendants. By then, however, he will most likely already be convicted and may be in prison.

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