What Jack Smith Has In Mind If The Supreme Court Takes Away His Toy And Leaves Him With Only Worse Theories For His DC Trial

It's Comical What His Fanboys Think He'll Be Able To Do If The Supreme Court Says Violent Conduct Isn't Within The Definition of "Obstruction".

Last week the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of United States v. Fischer. The issue in the Fischer case is whether the “go to” felony used by DOJ the past three years against January 6 defendants — a violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1512(c)(2) — actually applies to the events of that day where the crime charged is based on violence and/or property destruction. More than half the Justices expressed various levels of skepticism — some being overtly hostile — about DOJ’s interpretation of the statute based. The issue is one of “statutory construction” and the intent of Congress when it added the statute to a long list of other “obstruction of justice” statutes as part of the “Sarbanes-Oxley” law that followed the ENRON investigation in the early 2000s.

I wrote this lengthy piece on the Fischer case a few weeks before the oral arguments. It provides a comprehensive breakdown of the issue before the Court and the history of SCOTUS decisions involving other criminal statutes interpreted broadly by DOJ and lower courts.

The outcome of the Fischer case will have direct implications on the pending case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Trump in the District of Columbia federal court. Two of the four counts of that indictment involve the events of January 6, and the criminal violations come from the same statute. But the fanboys of SCO Smith — and Smith himself in filings he has made in the Florida classified documents case — are claiming that a decision favoring defendants in the Fischer case won’t necessarily extend to the case filed against Trump in D.C.

To understand these seemingly incompatible views, let’s first take a look at the structure of the statute in question and try to divine what it is SCO Smith and his barking seals in the media might think they can pull out of a hat.