The Supreme Court on Friday narrowed a federal obstruction statute that hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, and former President Donald Trump, were charged with.

What You Need To Know

  • The Supreme Court narrowed a federal obstruction statute that hundreds of defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were charged with

  • Former President Donald Trump also faced the charge in the federal election subversion case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith

  • Smith said that the charges faced by Trump will not be impacted by the ruling, but the decision could be used as fodder for claims by the ex-president and his Republican allies that the Justice Department has treated the Capitol riot defendants unfairly

  • Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the decision, wrote that the statute as written "would also criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists to decades in prison," and that to prove such a violation, "the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects"

  • Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in dissent, accused the high court of "abandoning" the approach of sticking to the text of the obstruction statute and "doing "textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach" of the charge

The statute was put into place in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal, which sought to prevent the destruction of financial evidence. The Justice Department used the statute to charge some of those arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election.

The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of a former Pennsylvania police officer charged for allegedly participating in the riot that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. Only some of the people who violently attacked the Capitol fall into that category. 

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Chief Justice John Roberts and four of her conservative colleagues in the majority, while conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in dissent.

Roberts, who authored the decision, wrote that the statute as written "would also criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists to decades in prison," and that to prove such a violation, "the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects."

Trump was charged with the statute, in addition to others, in the federal election subversion case against him, which is currently on hold as the Supreme Court weighs his claim of immunity.

Special counsel Jack Smith, the Justice Department prosecutor who brought both federal cases against Trump, said that the charges faced by Trump will not be impacted by the ruling. But the decision could be used as fodder for claims by Trump and his Republican allies that the Justice Department has treated the Capitol riot defendants unfairly.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was disappointed with the ruling, but the "vast majority" of Jan. 6 cases would not be impacted.

“January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government — the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” said Garland. “We will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”

In a statement, a senior Biden campaign adviser said that "violent insurrectionists and those who encourage them must be held accountable, but Donald Trump thinks otherwise."

"Just last night, Trump again defended January 6 and the insurrectionists who violently assaulted law enforcement officers and tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power," the senior Biden campaign adviser said. "Today’s ruling does not change the fundamental truth that Donald Trump will always put himself over our democracy."

Trump, on the other hand, called it "Big News!" in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Roughly 170 Capitol insurrection defendants have been convicted of obstructing or conspiring to obstruct the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, including the leaders of two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. A number of defendants have had their sentencings delayed until after the justices rule on the matter.

The ex-officer, Joseph Fischer, is one of around 350 Jan. 6 defendants charged with obstruction, though some of them accepted plea deals or were convicted of lesser charges. His case will be returned to a lower court to determine if he should still face the charge, which Jackson said is still a possibility.

"Joseph Fischer was charged with violating [the statute] by corruptly obstructing 'a proceeding before Congress, specifically, Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote,'" the liberal justice wrote in a concurring opinion. "That official proceeding plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves. And it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding."

"If so," she added, then the prosecution against Fischer under the charge "can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand."

But Barrett, in a sharp dissent, wrote that the high court did not dispute that the Jan. 6 electoral count was an "official proceeding," nor did they dispute that rioters disrupted it, nor even that "Fischer’s alleged conduct (which includes trespassing and a physical confrontation with law enforcement) was part of a successful effort to forcibly halt the certification of the election results."

"Given these premises, the case that Fischer can be tried for 'obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding' seems open and shut," Barrett wrote. "So why does the Court hold otherwise? Because it simply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said."

The statute, she said, "is a very broad provision, and admittedly, events like January 6th were not its target. (Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?) But statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway."

She accused the high court of "abandoning that approach" and doing "textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach" of the statute.

Most lower court judges who have weighed in have allowed the charge to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often reach beyond the principal evil that animated them.”

But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, another Trump appointee, dismissed the charge against Fischer and two other defendants, writing that prosecutors went too far. A divided panel of the federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the charge before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 1,000 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury or a judge after a trial.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which has handled Jan. 6 prosecutions, said no one who has been convicted of or charged with obstruction will be completely cleared because of the ruling. Every defendant also has other felony or misdemeanor charges, or both, prosecutors said.

For around 50 people who were convicted, obstruction was the only felony count, prosecutors said. Of those, roughly two dozen who still are serving their sentence are most likely to be affected by the ruling.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.