Judges decide the extent of the obstruction. Allegation at the heart of Trump’s January 6 case

The Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to decide an issue at the heart of the federal election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and hundreds of charges stemming from the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Can the government charge suspects? in those cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official congressional proceeding?

The decision to hear the case will complicate and perhaps even delay the start of Mr Trump’s trial, now set to take place in Washington in March. The Supreme Court’s final ruling, which may not come until June, will likely address the viability of two of the key charges against Mr. Trump. It could severely limit special counsel Jack Smith’s efforts to hold the former president accountable for the violence perpetrated by his supporters at the Capitol.

The court’s final decision could also invalidate convictions already handed down against dozens of Mr. Trump’s followers who took part in the attack. That would be a huge blow to the government’s prosecution of the January 6 riot cases.

The case the court agreed to involves Joseph Fischer, who has been indicted on seven charges for his role in the attack on the Capitol. Prosecutors say he attacked police as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election. Like hundreds of other rioters whose actions disrupted the certification proceedings at the Capitol, Mr. Fischer was charged with the obstruction count, formally known as 18 USC 1512.

Mr. Fischer requested dismissal of part of the charges filed under the Obstruction Act, which was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a statute primarily aimed at white-collar crime. Prosecutors have routinely used the charge of obstruction, rather than more politically controversial charges such as insurrection or seditious conspiracy, to describe how members of the pro-Trump mob disrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Judge Carl J. Nichols of the Federal District Court in Washington granted Mr. Fischer’s motion to dismiss, saying the law required defendants “to take some action with respect to a document, record, or other item” — something he said was missing from Mr. Fischer’s behavior in the Capitol.

A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Judge Nichols’ decision, ruling that the law “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.” Three Jan. 6 defendants, including Mr. Fischer, ultimately asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the law had been properly applied to the attack on the Capitol.

Obstruction charges were never an easy resolution in the cases arising from the storming of the Capitol. When the law was passed in the early 2000s, the law aimed to curb corporate malfeasance by banning things like destroying documents or tampering with witnesses or evidence.

Defense attorneys representing the Jan. 6 rioters argued that federal prosecutors improperly expanded their scope to cover the violence that erupted at the Capitol and interfered with the proceedings in which lawmakers had met to certify the outcome of the determine elections.

The attorneys also objected to the use of the charge against people who stormed the Capitol, saying many did not act “corruptly” as the law requires because they believed they were protesting a stolen election.

“The statute has been used to over-criminalize the Jan. 6 cases,” said Norm Pattis, attorney for Jake Lang, one of the three defendants who appealed to the Supreme Court. “Congress never intended it that way.”

Mr. Pattis said the Supreme Court’s review was “significant” in hundreds of criminal cases arising from the Capitol riot and was also “yet another reason the 2024 case against Donald Trump should be postponed.”

Two of the four charges in the federal election interference indictment against Mr. Trump are based on the obstruction charge. He has been charged with personally obstructing the certification proceedings at the Capitol on January 6 and is separately accused of conspiring with others to obstruct the proceedings.

The Supreme Court’s review, while potentially damaging to the indictment, would not affect the other two charges against Mr. Trump. One accuses him of conspiring to defraud the United States by using ruthless lies that the election was stolen from him in an attempt to overturn his defeat. The other accuses him of a plot to deprive millions of Americans of the right to have their votes counted.

But if the Supreme Court rules that the obstruction law does not apply to the mob attack on the Capitol, it could cripple Smith’s plans to pin the violence on Trump.

Recent court papers in the election case have strongly suggested that prosecutors intended to use the obstruction charge as a way to show the jury graphic videos of the attack on the Capitol and perhaps even introduce testimony from rioters who claim they had stormed the building on behalf of Mr Trump. .

The possibility that the Supreme Court could review the obstruction count — and one day invalidate it — has hung over Trump’s election case for months. But the court’s decision to act came at a particularly delicate time on Wednesday: two days after Mr. Smith asked the justices to expedite an appeal of Mr. Trump’s separate efforts to have the case dismissed based on broad claims of presidential immunity.

While the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will consider Mr. Trump’s immunity arguments, it has — in the space of a week — become deeply embroiled in the election interference proceedings. His decisions on the obstruction charge and on immunity could radically change the shape, scope and timing of the case, which long seemed like it would be the first of four charges Trump would face before a jury.

Attorney General Elizabeth B. Prelogar had urged the justices to refuse review of the case, saying the law was broad enough to cover Mr. Fischer’s actions even if there were no documents or other items in the were at issue.

“A defendant obstructs an official proceeding by physically blocking it — as happened here when petitioners and others violently occupied the Capitol for hours, preventing the joint session of Congress from doing its work,” she wrote.

She added that there were documents in the case anyway.

“Preventing members of Congress from validating state certifications thus constitutes an evidence-based obstruction,” she wrote, adding that a review was premature. “At a minimum, the government should be allowed to present its case to a jury and prove that petitioners obstructed a proceeding by (partially) preventing the relevant decision makers from viewing the evidence at the time and place designated for that purpose are specified.”

Regardless of how the Supreme Court ultimately rules, Trump’s lawyers will likely use his decision to review the obstruction charge to strengthen their arguments that the trial in Washington should be postponed, perhaps until after the 2024 presidential race is decided.

From the beginning of the case, Mr. Trump has pursued a sustained strategy of delay. If he can continue the process until after the election and win the race, he would be in a position to simply order that the charges against him be dropped.