Challenge to law being used against Trump
Washington – The US Supreme Court was hearing a challenge yesterday to a law used against former president Donald Trump and hundreds of his supporters who took part in the January 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has slapped the 77-year-old Trump with four felony charges related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The Republican presidential candidate is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy to deny Americans the right to vote and to have their votes counted.
He is also charged with obstruction of an official proceeding – the 6 January, 2021 joint session of Congress held to certify Biden’s victory.
Joseph Fischer, a former police officer, is among hundreds of Trump supporters facing or convicted of the same obstruction charges and is seeking to have them dismissed, which could have a knock-on effect for all of the cases, including Trump’s.
A federal district court judge, a Trump appointee, agreed to throw out Fischer’s obstruction charges on the grounds they were intended to prosecute financial crimes following the Enron scandal and did not apply to his conduct on 6 January.
That ruling was reversed by an appeals court in a 2-1 decision. The Supreme Court is now hearing Fischer’s appeal.
Jeffrey Green, Fischer’s attorney, told the justices that “attempting to stop a vote count or something like that is a very different act than changing or altering a document” as the law was used in the Enron case.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pushed back against Green’s reading of the law. “There is a sign in the theatre – you will be kicked out if you photograph or record the actors or otherwise disrupt the performance,” Sotomayor said.
“If you start yelling, no-one would question that you can be expected to be kicked out under this policy, even though yelling has nothing to do with photographing or recording. It’s not the manner in which you obstruct, it’s that you’ve obstructed.”
The nation’s highest court is expected to issue a ruling by the end of its term in June or early July – around four months before the 5 November presidential election in which Trump is expected to face Biden again.
Trump’s trial on the election interference charges had been scheduled to begin on 4 March but is on hold pending a Supreme Court examination of his claim that as a former president, he is immune from criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court is to hear arguments on 25 April.
There are four criminal cases hanging over Trump as he seeks to recapture the White House, and jury selection began on Monday in the first criminal trial of a former president.
In that case, Trump is accused of falsifying business records in a pre-2016 election scheme to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. –