Four Oath Keepers members found guilty of obstruction in the far-right group's third Jan. 6 trial
NBCMar 26, 2023
SCOTUS Narrows Use of Obstruction Charge in Jan. 6 Cases
story
Image copyright: Michael A. McCoy/Stringer/Getty Images News via Getty Images
The Facts
By a vote of 6-3, with liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joining the majority, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled Friday that the US Dept. of Justice (DOJ) wrongly used a federal law to prosecute Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendants.
The law in question, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, criminalizes anyone who "alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object" to "impair" an "official proceeding" or "otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding."
The Spin
Republican narrative
SCOTUS has heroically defended those who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 from the corrupt Biden DOJ's bad faith attempt to use the Enron charges against them. Hundreds of Trump supporters, who simply got caught up in a mob, were about to be turned into political prisoners just because the DOJ didn't like them, but now they can get justice.
Democratic narrative
Allegations that the DOJ used a broad brush with these charges are false. Out of the more than 1.2K criminals prosecuted for the Jan. 6 riots, only 300 or so were carefully chosen for these charges by the DOJ. They violently attacked the Capitol with the explicit motive of stopping the election certification, and thus should be punished as such.
