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The Supreme Court on Friday limited prosecutors’ ability to pursue obstruction charges against those who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, narrowing the scope of a law that could have extended prison terms for hundreds of defendants by years.
The ruling also has ramifications for former President Donald Trump, who was indicted on the same charges, but the impact appears to be less than initially expected.
Here are some key takeaways from this decision:
The charges against Trump are likely to remain unaffected. Even before Friday’s sentence was handed down, special counsel Jack Smith made clear that the obstruction charges against the Capitol rioters were based on different circumstances than the obstruction charges in President Trump’s federal election interference case.
Smith argued in court documents that the allegations in the indictment against Trump, particularly the allegations about the election fraud scheme, are a much broader case.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not specifically mention the fake electoral scheme, but Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, acknowledged that obstruction laws could be violated “not by tampering with incriminating evidence, but by creating false evidence.”
A Trump legal adviser told CNN that perhaps the best-case scenario is that the new ruling weakens the obstruction charges against Trump rather than dismissing them.
President Trump is celebrating anyway, and is hopeful about the immunity ruling. But politically, the former president, who has frequently sought to weaken the criminal justice system, seemed eager to position the decision as a major loss for the Justice Department.
President Trump called the decision a “huge victory” on social media.
Far more important for Trump is the Supreme Court’s decision on his claim for broad immunity for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That decision is due to be handed down on Monday.
Hundreds of other charges remain pending. The opinion gives the Justice Department room to refile lawsuits against at least some of the rioters accused of obstruction and would allow prosecutions to continue in situations where they sought to influence “documents” or “other objects” used in official proceedings.
About 249 cases involving obstruction charges are pending, all of which involve defendants facing other charges, including felonies and misdemeanors. About 52 people have been convicted and sentenced solely on the obstruction charge, and 27 of them are currently incarcerated, according to prosecutors.
Jackson joined the Supreme Court’s conservative wing, while Barrett joined the liberal wing. Although the Fisher v. United States Supreme Court decision was 6–3, the vote did not entirely stray along traditional ideological lines: instead, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with Roberts, while conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote an opinion joined by the two liberals.
Read the full breakdown Supreme Court ruling of January 6th.
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