SCOTUSblog By Amy Howe
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on April 16 in the case of a former police officer from Pennsylvania who entered the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. Joseph Fischer, who was charged with (among other things) assaulting a police officer, disorderly conduct in the Capitol, and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, has asked the justices to throw out the charge that he obstructed an official proceeding, arguing that the law that he was charged with violating was only intended to apply to evidence tampering.
More than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with violating the law, which was enacted as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron scandal. It is also at the center of two of the charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. – the same case in which the justices will hear argument on April 25 regarding Trump’s claims of immunity.
Before the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, prosecutors note, Fischer sent text messages in which he indicated to acquaintances that members of Congress “[c]an’t vote if they can’t breathe … lol” and that he might need his police chief “to post my bail … It might get violent.” And on Jan. 6, prosecutors say, Fischer urged rioters to “charge” and “hold the line” and was part of the mob that pushed the police. Fischer says that he arrived at the Capitol after the joint meeting of Congress to count the certified votes in the 2020 presidential election had already gone into recess. He was inside the building for only a few minutes, he contends, where he was pushed into the police line by the crowd.
In a message on social media on Jan. 7, Fischer wrote that he had been “pepper balled and [pepper] sprayed … but entry into the Capital [sic] was needed to send a message that we the people hold the real power.”
The FBI arrested Fischer on Feb. 19, 2021, and charged him with, among other things, assaulting officers of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department, the primary law enforcement agency for the District of Columbia. He was also charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.”
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer. In another case involving a Jan. 6 defendant, Nichols had concluded that the previous subsection, Section 1512(c)(1), which prohibits tampering with evidence “with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” limits Section 1512(c)(2) to cases involving evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding…
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