TXAggie2011 said:

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Watermelon Man said:

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... said:

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I don't know if SCOTUS will or will not expedite this. But wholly possible.

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Is it possible for the SC to deny the stay, but grant certiorari to review the appellate court decision?

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Yes. But unlikely as said above.

A key piece of obtaining a stay is showing you have a good chance of winning the case, so if they deny the stay, especially knowing it means the trial would continue, I think that's a decent sign that they don't think Trump's got a decent case. And that means granting cert becomes more unlikely.

But big egos sit on SCOTUS and they might want to have the final word for the sake of having the final word even if it's definitively upholding the lower court rulings.

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barbacoa taco said:

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You mean the same way Trump is trying to slow roll his appeals on a bogus issue in the most obvious delay tactic ever in hopes he can win the election and pardon himself from a crime he oh so obviously didn't commit?

You know, for totally non political reasons.

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Ag with kids said:

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TXAggie2011 said:

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Watermelon Man said:

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... said:

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I don't know if SCOTUS will or will not expedite this. But wholly possible.

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Is it possible for the SC to deny the stay, but grant certiorari to review the appellate court decision?

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Yes. But unlikely as said above.

A key piece of obtaining a stay is showing you have a good chance of winning the case, so if they deny the stay, especially knowing it means the trial would continue, I think that's a decent sign that they don't think Trump's got a decent case. And that means granting cert becomes more unlikely.

But big egos sit on SCOTUS and they might want to have the final word for the sake of having the final word even if it's definitively upholding the lower court rulings.

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Yeah...

THAT is the reason...

Not the merits.

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Im Gipper said:

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There is no "avoiding the politics" here.

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Im Gipper said:

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There is no "avoiding the politics" here.

No matter what they decide, its going to have a profound effect on the election.

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barbacoa taco said:

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Im Gipper said:

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There is no "avoiding the politics" here.

No matter what they decide, its going to have a profound effect on the election.

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well your second statement is certainly true. but the most hands off move here is to deny cert and let the trial play out. I dont think anyone wants the SCOTUS to come close to deciding an election and have a repeat (of sorts) of Bush v Gore. It's certain Roberts does not want that.

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barbacoa taco said:

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Im Gipper said:

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There is no "avoiding the politics" here.

No matter what they decide, its going to have a profound effect on the election.

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well your second statement is certainly true. but the most hands off move here is to deny cert and let the trial play out. I dont think anyone wants the SCOTUS to come close to deciding an election and have a repeat (of sorts) of Bush v Gore. It's certain Roberts does not want that.

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ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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Stated another way, what's wrong with just saying, "timing is bad and optics on timing look bad. Let's put a pin in this and pick back up after election"?

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will25u said:

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It's also not just about tarnishing Trump. It is also about campaign money.

Trump is blowing TONS of campaign money on defending himself with all these lawsuits. So he won't have nearly the amount of cash to run ads, etc.

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of its assets,

3) cancel the election,

4) if, by some chance, he is forced out of office, he can walk out of the White House with 15 moving vans full of every classified secret he wants and sell them to the highest bidder.

And no one could do anything to prosecute him for

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) February 23, 2024

MiamiHopper said:

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They sure are taking their sweet time if they are granting the stay.

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Quote:

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Did the D.C. Circuit err in construing 18 U.S.C. 1512(c) ("Witness, Victim, or Informant Tampering"), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence?

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Quote:

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The Department of Justice has made use of a variety of charges against January 6 defendants, but the most consequential charge employed against non-violent offenders has been a violatino 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1512(c)(2) "corruptly interfering with an official proceeding." The statute defines "official proceeding" to include "proceedings before Congress."

Violations of Sec. 1512(c)(2) are subject to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The Sentencing Guidelines applicable to this section, as used by the Government in plea offers and applied by the Court, almost assure that the applicable sentencing guideline range will be between 3 and 4 years in prison.
Two of the four counts in the indictment brought against former President Trump charge him with violations of Section 1512(c). Both rely on the same legal rationale and facts from the events of January 6 as those being used against January 6 defendants such a Joe Fischer. If the Supreme Court reverses Joe Fischer's conviction, those two counts alleged in Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictment will be dismissed and with them the heart of the D.C. prosecution.

There are other criminal statutes that have been charged as well. For defendants actively engaged in some form of physical confrontation or violence with law enforcement that day, the DOJ has charged violations of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 111(a) and (b) assulting, interfering, impeding, etc., a law enforcement officer and Sec. 231, "civil disorder." They have also charged a combination of two different misdemeanor statutes that related to being unlawfully on the grounds of the Capitol, and unlawfully entering the Capitol building variations of "trespassing."

But the Sec. 1512(c)(2) charge has been DOJ's "go to" felony from the start because of how the sentencing guidelines are made to apply in plea agreements. Defendants are presented with plea agreements by DOJ and told to "take it or leave it" as to the terms offered. When the government is winning 99.75% of the cases that go to trial, there isn't much leverage for defendants to "bargain" with as to the terms of the "plea bargain" being offered.

To be accurate contrary to what you might have read or been told elsewhere there are some District Judges on the DC Court who have the view that 3-4 years for "obstructing Congress" is overly harsh where there was no physical encounter with law enforcement, and have given substantially shorter sentenes than the 3-4 years called for in the plea agreements. In fact, there are some judges who have given less time even when there was significant contact with police officers at some point during the day.
But the 1512 count is the lynch-pin to the Biden DOJ's narrative that the riot was all about subverting democracy and was an "insurrection" to prevent the transfer of power to the incoming Biden Administration. Without the narrative that flows from "obstructing Congress," the events of the day become simply a protest over which the police lost control because they were undermanned and unprepared among other reasons.

If you know nothing about the Fischer case or how it impacts the pending prosecution of former President Trump, this column should give you a foundation for understanding about what the Supreme Court will be deciding and how the outcome of Joe Fischer's case could lay waste to the theory of SCO Jack Smith's prosecution of former President Trump.

If you have an understanding of the issue raised by Fischer and how it is connected to the Trump case, this column should give you a better understanding as to how the decision will likely be reached.
I begin with the hopeful view and premise that the Supreme Court didn't need to take Joe Fischer's case to affirm DOJ's use of Sec. 1512(c)(2) under the facts. It only takes 4 Justices to agree to hear a case, but it takes 5 votes to overturn the lower court.

It is a well established and understood practice that four Justices do not vote to take a case if there is little chance of a fifth Justice joining them in the outcome. The Court takes a limited number of cases each year, and if a minority view of the Court four or fewer Justices is not likely to be converted to a majority view with five votes, it is a waste of the Court's time and resources when "denying Cert" accomplishes almost the same objective as taking a case and affirming the decision of the Appeals Court below.
The Supreme Court most often takes up cases when here is a split in the Circuit Courts of Appeal there are 12 of them and the Supreme Court needs to sort out the issue in order to bring uniformity to the law nationwide. In that instance one Circuit is "affirmed" while other Circuits are reversed.

But that is not the case here and that is an oddity in the facts that further supports the view that the Supreme Court has taken the Fischer case in order to reverse the Appeals Court.

The application of Sec. 1512(c)(2) here involves Congress. That makes the application unique to the District of Columbia, so there will only ever be one District Court and one Appeals Court that will ever consider the issue. Every District Judge except one has ruled in favor of DOJ and endorsed its use of Sec. 1512(c)(2) on the facts. The Circuit Court of Appeals produced a 2-1 decision in favor of DOJ as well with a fractured opinion that is not easily understood.

So only two Judges in the Courts below have dissented from DOJ's use of the statute in the manner in which it has been used. If the Justices believed the outcome of Fischer in the Appeals Court was correct, it could have just left it to later opinions by the Appeals Court on other cases to sort out the issues left unresolved by the Fischer panel's fractured opinions.

So while my view is biased, I think it unlikely that the Court took up Joe Fischer's case for the purpose of answering the question posed above as "No, the DC Appeals Court did not err in the manner it construed Sec. 1512(c)(2)."

This view comes not just from an analysis of the use of the statute in relationship to January 6, but also taking into account that the Supreme Court has repeatedly reversed DOJ's use of criminal statutes over the past 18 years where the error involved an over-expansive application of statutes to factual circumstances not envisioned by Congress as reflected in the statutory language.

Criminal statutes are passed by Congress to address specific instances of conduct that Congress chooses to define as "criminal" obviously. But the Court has repeatedly rejected expansive definitions employed by DOJ to use the language of statute to broaden its reach to encompass conduct DOJ wants to criminalize by application, and not allow itself to be limited by what Congress intended.

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#BREAKING:#SCOTUS *takes up* January 6 immunity case on an expedited basis; keeps prosecution on hold pending oral argument the week of April 22.

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 28, 2024

Here’s the order: pic.twitter.com/H0mJ7thr00

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 28, 2024

ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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Not surprising. I assume from a grant of cert and scheduling-wise that's the deal Roberts brokered to keep anyone writing more at this phase.

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aggiehawg said:

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ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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Not surprising. I assume from a grant of cert and scheduling-wise that's the deal Roberts brokered to keep anyone writing more at this phase.

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SCOTUS converted the motion to stay into a petition for cert. So there are no numbers or details on which justice voted which way.

So end of April arguments, opinion by end of May? June?

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barbacoa taco said:

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it's meant to drive home the point of how stupid Trump's argument is

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Rapier108 said:

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All of the leftist ****s on Twitter saying if Trump wins the immunity case, Biden should immediately have Trump and other Republicans killed because he would be legally allowed to do so.

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barbacoa taco said:

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it's meant to drive home the point of how stupid Trump's argument is

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Rapier108 said:

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barbacoa taco said:

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it's meant to drive home the point of how stupid Trump's argument is

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No, they're actually serious about it.

Quit excusing that kind of talk, Larry.

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ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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barbacoa taco said:

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it's meant to drive home the point of how stupid Trump's argument is

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try to engage in productive discussion here. We get that you hate Trump.

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