by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
One has to wonder from the USSC arguments the other day.
Legal experts said the Biden administration was “on the ropes” in Tuesday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court in a case questioning whether a Jan. 6 rioter can be charged with a federal “obstruction” crime, which carries implications for former President Trump.
On Tuesday, Jeffrey Green, lawyer for Joseph Fischer – who is one of more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with “obstruction of an official proceeding” in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol – argued that the federal statute shouldn’t apply and that it had only ever been applied to evidence-tampering cases.
Biden’s DOJ has “repurposed” the SarBox law, in short, to bring the most-serious of felony charges in the Jan 6 cases, and has won many convictions on those charges. They also form the basis of the most-serious charges against Trump himself.
What’s also interesting is that in 2019 the OLC issued an opinion — which was never “formally” put into practice — that the law didn’t apply in this sort of situation at all. I was unaware of that but the case process that led to the Supremes hearing the case has brought that into the forefront.