Some rioters have even won early release from prison while the appeal is pending over concerns that they might end up serving longer than they should have if the Supreme Court rules against the Justice Department. That includes Kevin Seefried, a Delaware man who threatened a Black police officer with a pole attached to a Confederate battle flag as he stormed the Capitol. Seefried was sentenced last year to three years behind bars, but a judge recently ordered that he be released one year into his prison term while awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.The high court case focuses on whether the anti-obstruction provision of a law that was enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp. can be used against Jan. 6 defendants.Fischer’s lawyers argue that the provision was meant to close a loophole in criminal law and discourage the destruction of records in response to an investigation. Until the Capitol riot, they told the court, every criminal case using the provision had involved allegations of destroying or otherwise manipulating records.But the administration says the other side is reading the law too narrowly, arguing it serves “as a catchall offense designed to ensure complete coverage of all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding,” including Fischer’s “alleged conduct in joining a violent riot to disrupt the joint session of Congress certifying the presidential election results.”Smith has argued separately in the immunity case that the obstruction charges against Trump are valid, no matter the outcome of Fischer’s case.Most lower court judges who have weighed in have allowed the charge to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often reach beyond the principal evil that animated them.”But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, another Trump appointee, dismissed the charge against Fischer and two other defendants, writing that prosecutors went too far. A divided panel of the federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the charge before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.While it’s not important to the Supreme Court case, the two sides present starkly differing accounts of Fischer’s actions on Jan. 6. Fischer’s lawyers say he “was not part of the mob” that forced lawmakers to flee the House and Senate chambers, noting that he entered the Capitol after Congress had recessed. The weight of the crowd pushed Fischer into a line of police inside, they said in a court filing.



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