WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday in favor of a Jan. 6 defendant charged with obstruction of an official proceeding quickly triggered activity to revisit that charge in other Capitol rioter cases, but it’s unlikely to derail former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference case.
Justice Department officials and attorneys for Jan. 6 defendants said the court’s 6-3 ruling in the case involving former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer would not have an immediate effect on most of the 1,000-plus convictions secured by prosecutors.
The court’s decision is poised to have the biggest impact on the 52 rioters who were convicted and sentenced on an obstruction charge and no other felony offense. There are currently 27 defendants serving a prison sentence solely on a felony obstruction charge.
“There are no cases in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer,” Attorney General Merrick Garland noted in a statement on Friday.
All defendants charged with obstruction faced other charges; the 52 who faced only the obstruction felony charge also faced misdemeanor charges in connection with efforts to disrupt congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Garland went on to say that while he was “disappointed” with the Supreme Court’s decision, the Justice Department “will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”
One Jan. 6 defendant unlikely to see much impact from Friday’s decision is Trump, whose election interference case involves an obstruction charge.
Andrew Weissmann, who served as a lead prosecutor in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, said on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” that he didn’t expect it would affect the case at all.
“I don’t think it will have any effect whatsoever in the Trump Jan. 6 indictment,” Weissmann said.
Sara R. Fitzpatrick, an attorney who has been tracking the Fischer case, agreed that the decision “pretty clearly” does not impact special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump, which is on hold until the Supreme Court rules on Trump’s presidential immunity claim on Monday.
“The decision essentially limits Section 1512(c)(2) to conduct that falsifies or tampers with in some way evidence or any other document or object used in an official proceeding,” Fitzpatrick said. “The statute would still apply to people who are accused of doing anything to any document involved in that certification, and one of the things that President Trump is accused of is working to create false election certificates and have those used instead of the real election certificates.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case.
Speaking at a campaign rally on Friday, Trump praised the court’s ruling.
“They’ve been waiting for this decision for a long time. They’ve been waiting for a long time, and that was a great answer. That was a great thing for people who have been so horribly treated,” Trump told supporters in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Filings from other Jan. 6 defendants began hitting the docket Friday. Robert Turner, who was convicted of obstruction as well as a host of charges including two other felonies — civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers — after a jury trial this month, requested that a judge enter a motion of acquittal because of the Fischer ruling.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Friday suspended a trial scheduled for July 22 after prosecutors filed a joint motion with Jan. 6 defendant William Pope seeking to delay the case after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Both parties are evaluating the decision, which has ramifications for the charges, presentation of evidence, and jury instructions at the trial in this matter,” the joint filing said.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich took a proactive approach on Friday by asking prosecutors and defense attorneys in three cases involving convicted and sentenced Jan. 6 defendants to propose a schedule for further proceedings on the impact of the ruling, noting that the defendants would have resentencing hearings. Those defendants were Guy Reffitt — the first Jan. 6 defendant to go to trial — who was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison in August 2022; Ronald Sandlin, who filmed himself assaulting officers and breaking into the Senate chamber and was sentenced to five years in federal prison in December 2022; and Jacob Travis Clark, who was sentenced to 33 months of incarceration in October 2023.
Friedrich also suggested she was likely to dismiss the obstruction charge against Jan. 6 defendant Zachary Alam, who used his helmet to smash windows leading into the House Speaker’s Lobby just before rioter Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed. Alam was set to be sentenced next month following his conviction on a number of charges last year. Friedrich also asked both parties to submit filings on the impact of the Fischer ruling on Alam’s sentencing guidelines.
Supporters of Jan. 6 defendants and attorneys who have represented them in court reacted positively to the Supreme Court’s ruling, though they acknowledged it was complex and its ultimate impact was yet to be determined.
“Open the prison gates!” joked one lawyer who has represented Jan. 6 defendants, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who has represented dozens of Capitol riot defendants, said that the fallout from the Fischer decision is going to be complicated.
“This is not necessarily going to resolve cases in the manner that some seem to expect,” he said.
“You’ve never had a situation like this,” he said. “I’m not aware of any prior circumstance where hundreds of people were charged with the same crime for the same events, only to have the Supreme Court then say that was wrongfully applied, and all those cases have to be revisited at the same moment. In that sense, how this plays out is far from obvious.”
Shipley said there would be many defendants behind bars right now who are affected by the decision and seek to be released on bail until all of the implications can be sorted out. But he also said there’s risk involved for some defendants in seeking relief.
“There are going to be cases out there where the defendant pled guilty to a single count, and the government dismissed all the other counts. Well, the government can recharge all those other counts,” Shipley said. “The government’s got a 99.9% conviction rate, what do they have to fear? They have nothing to fear by going back, recharging the case, and putting in more counts. So there’s a real decision to be made by some of these defendants if it’s worth trying to get rid of their felonies.”
On the other side of the docket, Justice Department officials say that while the Supreme Court’s decision is certainly going to have an impact, it’s not going to upend their work or their approach to prosecuting cases.
“It’s not the death knell to our efforts that some are making it out to be,” one law enforcement official told NBC News.
