aggiehawg said:

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Sotomayor is stupid as usual.

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aggiehawg said:

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Sotomayor is stupid as usual.

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aggiehawg said:

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Sotomayor is stupid as usual.

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Joseph Fischer was charged with various offenses, but U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of the District of Columbia dismissed the 1512(c)2 charges. Judge Nichols found that the statute is exclusively directed to crimes related to documents, records, or other objects.

The D.C. Circuit reversed and held that Section 1512(c)(2) is a "catch all" provision that encompasses all forms of obstructive conduct. Circuit Judge Florence Pan ruled that the "natural, broad reading of the statute is consistent with prior interpretations of the words it uses and the structure it employs."

However, Judge Gregory Katsas dissented and rejected "the government's all-encompassing reading."

The Court will now consider the question of whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in construing 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence.

The law itself was not designed for this purpose. It was part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and has been described as "prompted by the exposure of Enron's massive accounting fraud and revelations that the company's outside auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, had systematically destroyed potentially incriminating documents."

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Government is using an obscure financial crimes statute about delaying Congressional proceeding to destroy the lives of J6 protesters. Gorsuch just asked whether pulling a fire alarm before a Congressional vote could qualify (e..g, what Democrat Jamaal Bowman did recently) and…

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 16, 2024

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Justices Gorsuch and Alito just annihilated the entire foundation of Biden’s DOJ case against J6 protesters.

They dunk on the US solicitor general with examples of unhinged leftist psychos disrupting official proceedings, and ask why those protesters were never charged.… pic.twitter.com/ovEMZqBbmZ

— Meara (@MillennialOther) April 16, 2024

PA24 said:

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I love this Supreme Court....

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What the government conceded today is that 1512c2 has only been used in this manner against J6ers (something DC circuit already admitted) and would not apply to other disruptive demonstrations that we see on nearly a daily basis.

Thomas, Gorsuch, Roberts, and Kavanaugh pressed… https://t.co/zZBV9OKVRI

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) April 16, 2024

I cannot even begin to summarize my thoughts here on the oral argument in Fischer that just ended.

But I will say that I'm going to redouble my efforts to understand and chart a path through the legal landscape of what will follow from a reversal.

Multiple Justices -- across…

— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) April 16, 2024

will25u said:

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What the government conceded today is that 1512c2 has only been used in this manner against J6ers (something DC circuit already admitted) and would not apply to other disruptive demonstrations that we see on nearly a daily basis.

Thomas, Gorsuch, Roberts, and Kavanaugh pressed… https://t.co/zZBV9OKVRI

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) April 16, 2024

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Multiple Justices -- across the Court -- voiced concerns on multiple grounds about HOW the Govt is applying this statute based on the breadth of the definitions it is using in doing so.

And the reference to a short decision from last FRIDAY that seems to cut the legs out from under the Govt's position that 1512(c)(2) is a "stand alone" provision not contained at all by the language of (c)(1) was really telling.

Also, there were NUMEROUS concessions/ representations made by the Solicitor General about HOW the J6 cases are being prosecuted that are not entirely consistent with the outcomes. The claims about mean and median sentences -- and the representation that after Block the GL ranges will be in the range of 6-20 months -- IGNORES completely what the sentences were based on the Govt arguments for nearly three years. Jake Chansley got a GL sentence of 41 months. THAT has been the standard. Shorter sentences have only resulted from some Judges departing below the GL range, ALWAYS contrary to the efforts made by the Govt.

I will be getting the transcript of the hearing and using the statements by the Solicitor General in future court hearings.

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nortex97 said:

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She is wholly incompetent.

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In Reading the Obstruction Statute, Do We Look before or after ‘Otherwise’? - me @NRO ... https://t.co/s8mwrcrYGp

— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) April 17, 2024

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This offends three important principles.
The first is notice: Criminal laws are supposed to be sufficiently clear that a person of ordinary intelligence knows what is prohibited. Congress is supposed to define what is proscribed and then, with everyone sufficiently aware, prosecutors apply what Congress has defined; we're not supposed to have a situation in which conduct that Congress has not gotten around to criminalizing occurs and, because the conduct is condemnable in the abstract, prosecutors presume they are at liberty to criminalize it by stretching nonapplicable statutes to the breaking point.
The second, following from the first, is separation of powers: Congress writes the laws, and prosecutors enforce them; prosecutors are not permitted to create crimes: They are stuck with what Congress has prescribed.
The third is arbitrary enforcement: When prosecutors are given not only prosecutorial discretion (which they undoubtedly have) but carte blanche to create crimes, what invariably happens is that unpopular people are punished while popular and/or politically connected people are immune. On that score, a number of the justices wondered aloud today why, if DOJ says any corrupt act that impedes a proceeding may be prosecuted under Section 1512(c)(2), it has only been applied on that theory to the Capitol rioters. How about Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman, who pulled a fire alarm to prevent a vote in the House? How about the radical leftist rioters who firebombed the federal courthouse in Portland? How about the leftist demonstrators who forcibly disrupted Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings?
There is certainly a discernible pattern when it comes to who gets prosecuted and who doesn't. But that pattern partisan politics has never been thought to be an acceptable limiting principle in the enforcement of federal law . . . at least not by people willing to state honestly what guides their exercises of prosecutorial discretion.

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