USSC to hear case regarding overturning conviction of Jan 6th protester.

At issue is the use of the Obstruction of Congress statute that has been used to increase the penalty.

As I’ve previously explained (see, e.g., here), Fischer is the challenge brought by Capitol riot defendants to the Justice Department’s use of a controversial obstruction statute to prosecute them. The statute, Section 1512(c)(2), was designed to close a gap in the criminal law that made it difficult to prosecute people who shredded or otherwise manipulated evidence of financial crimes.

Stretching it beyond its original purpose, as federal prosecutors are wont to do (despite the Supreme Court’s occasional admonitions against that proclivity), the Biden Justice Department has used it repeatedly to charge rioters who stormed the Capitol (equating corrupt conduct intended to prevent a proceeding from taking place with the statute’s target of corrupt conduct intended to doctor or destroy evidence to be presented at a proceeding). In Trump’s case, the leap is even more stark: Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith has applied Section 1512(c)(2) to target Trump’s allegedly corrupt reliance on the cockamamie legal theory that the vice president (Mike Pence at the time) had authority to invalidate or refuse to count state-certified electoral votes.

To say that prosecutors have stretched the law to put away conservative protesters while twisting it into a pretzel to protect people like Hunter and Joe Biden is an understatement. But as everyone keeps pointing out, the Roberts court has been loath to get too terribly involved in these politicalized issues, thus trying to avoid the ultimate criticism of being politicized themself. But at this point, there doesn't seem to be much choice. They are supposed to be the adults in the room and sometimes they have to do the tough thing, the right thing, the noble thing, even if it pisses some people off.

No conservatives asked Biden to pressure Garland into appointing Special Counsel. It was completely unnecessary. Certainly, the same could be true as it pertains to choosing the overly aggressive Jack Smith as Special Counsel. This of the White House bidding. Furthermore, nobody asked Jack Smith to twist the law into knots in order to charge Trump with these crimes. All of these are choices made by Democrats attempting to massage the criminal justice system to their political advantage.

The job of the United States Supreme Court is to be the final arbitrator of the law and that means sometimes they have to make tough and controversial calls. This is a case that need to be settled on the merits. We need to make a final determination as to how far our prosecutor are allowed to bend the law for their own political purpose, at least as it pertains to January 6th. Did a protester, who walked into a federal building where no congress people were even present, and actually "obstruct" anything? What was the actual difference between what that person did and what others who have entered the Capital building have done?

There seems to be a fine line between a political protest that is designed to muck up the system in order to delay or bring attention to a political action and someone committing a crime that puts them in jail. That line all seems to be drawn at the cause of of the protest. Protest the right thing and you get your citation and fine. Protest the wrong thing and you get treated like a terrorist and held in solitary confinement for months. Maybe our USSC sees no problem with this? Maybe they do. But it is up to them to make a call one way or the other.