If you, like me, think that the January 6th defendants have often been overcharged for merely entering the Capitol building, then you should be watching this case.

The Supreme Court has just granted cert to an appeal by Joseph Fischer, who was charged with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and thus faces a severe sentence. The charges are based on a law passed in the early aughts (2002). Those charges are based solely on his trespass and not on any violence or destruction.

SCOTUS just granted certiorari to the US v. Fischer case on the proper interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).

This is the 20-year penalty felony offense for Obstruction of Congress that the DOJ has been charging J6 defendants (and convicting them of) even without most of the…

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) December 13, 2023

Bloomberg Law’s take on the Court’s consideration of the case is, unsurprisingly, driven by the fact that it might upend some of the charges leveled at Trump. And it is hard to criticize that focus because, well…Trump. He is the big dog, and if Fischer wins his appeal some of the cases against Trump either get complicated or even go away.

The US Supreme Court added a new complication to the prosecution of Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as the justices agreed to hear an appeal from a Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendant facing a related charge.

The justices said Wednesday they will decide whether Joseph Fischer can be charged under a 2002 law that grew out of the Enron Corp. collapse for obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors have also invoked that law against Trump, as well as in 300 other Capitol riot cases.

Supreme Court involvement could give Trump new grounds for arguing to push back his March 4 federal court trial in Washington until after the 2024 presidential election. Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

Ultimately, a ruling favoring Fischer could upend two of the four counts Trump is facing in the case, one of four criminal prosecutions against him. Under its normal scheduling procedures, the Supreme Court will hear arguments next year and rule by the end of June.

Trump can and should use the status of this appeal as an argument for delaying his trials. As a non-lawyer, I have no idea how the system will respond to the potential that some of Trump’s charges might become moot.

The Supreme Court’s decision to accept the case suggests that at least four justices believe there is a legitimate argument that the obstruction statute does not apply to interfering with the joint session of Congress, according to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade.

“It creates some uncertainty for the Trump indictment, which includes two counts that rely on that same legal theory,” McQuade said. “On the other hand, two other counts do not rely on this theory at all, and so the case can and should proceed without regard to this issue.”

But Timothy Parlatore, a criminal defense lawyer who once represented Trump in the Jan. 6 prosecution, said Supreme Court review is “a potential game changer” for the ex-president’s case. If the court rules for Fischer, “it will completely gut the Trump indictment,” he said.

But let’s face it…when it comes to Trump’s legal cases, the law takes a back seat to politics. The Left is determined to get Trump embroiled in trials next year, and they have the clout to make it happen whether it is legally justified or not. I don’t think this will have a major impact on Trump or the presidential election. The “justice” system is just a political bludgeon to be used against Trump, and the charges against him are merely one weapon in the left’s arsenal against him.

Cynical, I know.

I see the importance of this appeal very differently: there are hundreds of January 6th defendants who are getting ground up in the gears of the system because it suits the political needs of the big guys, and that is just plain evil. If the Supreme Court’s decision upends that process, it will change a lot of basically innocent people’s lives for the better.

I would count that as a win.

Apparently, the law under which these defendants are charged is similar to RICO in the sense that it was designed to go after bad actors who abuse the system’s ambiguities. In this case, it was a response to the Enron scandal, just as RICO was designed to go after mafia bosses. Both laws have been stretched so far out of recognition that ordinary folks are getting destroyed simply because the powers that be want to do so.

Fischer contends the Justice Department is overstretching a provision in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was designed to outlaw the destruction of corporate documents in cases of financial wrongdoing.

The provision authorizes as much as 20 years in prison for a person who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object” with the intent to undermine an official proceeding. A second prong applies to anyone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.”

Nobody whose crime is just walking through the Capitol should go to jail. Leftists take over government buildings all the time, and everybody shrugs; a conservative does so, and he is off to jail for months or even years. Violence and destruction should be punished harshly; walking around? Not so much.

I, for one, hope Fischer wins his appeal. It would be a small measure of justice in an otherwise sorry episode in American history.