Supreme Court hears challenge to law used to prosecute hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants

[sl8]

https://www.wgbh.org/news/2024-04-16/supreme-court-hears-challenge-to-law-used-to-prosecute-hundreds-of-jan-6-defendants
(audio at link)

Supreme Court hears challenge to law used to prosecute hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants

LISTEN • 5:07

Nina Totenberg
April 16, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in a case testing a statute used to prosecute hundreds of defendantscharged with invading the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral ballots for president in 2020. That statute is also the basis for one of the four obstruction counts brought against former President Donald Trump in the criminal case currently pending against himin federal court in Washington.

The man at the center of Tuesday's case, though, is Joseph W. Fischer. He was a police officer in a township near Harrisburg, Pa., when he joined the mob inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. He, like 352 other defendants, was charged with obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official congressional proceeding.

In Fischer's case, however, a federal judge ruled that the obstruction statute was meant to apply to destruction of documents and records, not events like those on Jan 6. A sharply divided federal appeals court reversed that decision, and Fischer appealed to the Supreme Court, which hears arguments in the case Tuesday.

Because Fischer's case is in limbo, he has not been tried yet. But it is uncontested that while he was not part of the mob that first breached the Capitol, he soon joined the riot. At the Capitol, he even recorded a four-minute cell phone video in which he either knocked police officers to the ground or was pushed into the line of police officers, with the same result. The video he made is under seal and cannot be viewed by the public.

[...]

[gab13by13]

1. Surely to fuck

this fascist Supreme Court won't interpret what happened as not obstructing an official act of Congress?

WTF do I know, I'm not a learned scholar.

I also am aware that there is a difference between the legal definition of "traitor" and the dictionary definition of "traitor." The dictionary definition is the one I use.

[Passages]

2. HIgh stakes.

Holding my breath.

[sanatanadharma]

3. Every one who entered the Capitol building was there "obstructing" the legal, constitutional, peaceful transfer of power

Every one who entered the Capitol building was there "obstructing" the legal, constitutional, peaceful transfer of power, a basic tradition and definition of the American system.
Every one is/was anti-American; in denial and obstructing the process of American Democracy.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. Kicking up because the oral arguments are about to start. NT