Liberal Forum

Supreme Court guts Jack Smith’s January 6 witch hunt

7 DAYS AGO0  0 Donald Trump’s winning streak rolls on.

That’s bad news for Joe Biden.

And now the Supreme Court has smacked Jack Smith with a loss that has Democrats in tears.

A six-to-three majority on the Supreme Court handed Joe Biden’s weaponized Justice Department and Jack Smith a huge setback by narrowing the use of Section 1512(c)(2) of the Corporate Fraud and Accountability Act of 2002 to prosecute Donald Trump and his supporters on charges of obstructing an official proceeding with regards to January 6.

Two of the four charges in Smith’s sham indictment of Trump were for obstructing an official proceeding.

The Biden Justice Department used this statute to prosecute more than 350 Trump supporters and hit them with prison sentences of up to 20 years. Congress initially passed this law – known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act– after the Enron scandal of 2001.

The relevant legislative text was about corporate executives destroying documents.

Section 1512(c)(2) reads:(c) Whoever corruptly—(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Joseph Fischer challenged his conviction on these grounds around the government’s use of the statute as being overly broad.

Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority agreed, saying the government needed to prove January 6 defendants destroyed documents or interfered with the official record whereas the Biden Justice Department claimed their mere presence in the building amounted to obstruction.

“To prove a violation of Section 1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so,” Roberts wrote.

“The judgment of the D. C. Circuit is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” Roberts added.

Roberts shot down the Biden administration jumping over statutes that described actual crimes that may have been committed to cherry-pick one section of law because it carried a greater prison sentence. 

“The Government’s reading of Section 1512 would intrude on that deliberate arrangement of constitutional authority over federal crimes, giving prosecutors broad discretion to seek a 20- year maximum sentence for acts Congress saw fit to punish only with far shorter terms of imprisonment—for example, three years for harassment under §1512(d)(1), or ten years for threatening a juror under §1503,” Roberts added

.The Biden administration wanted to punish Trump supporters for opposing Biden so they reached for the harshest penalties possible without considering the law.

As for Smith, two of his charges against Trump are for the so-called “fake electors” plot, which was really just Trump supporters wanting an alternate slate of electors to challenge results like JFK did when he submitted an alternate slate of electors for Hawaii in the 1960 election.The indictment accused Trump of using “knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified.”

But now those charges look like they just got gutted.

Supreme Court guts Jack Smith’s January 6 witch hunt - Black Eye Politics
 
 

Why the ruling is also bad for partisan *** bragg...

But those aren’t the only cases affected.

The Supreme Court also ruled that prosecutors can’t enter official acts as evidence.

Alvin Bragg’s rigged guilty verdict in New York was already on shaky grounds for multiple reasons not limited to incorrect jury instructions, the judge allowing prejudicial testimony into the record, Bragg using two misdemeanors where the statute of limitations expired to create 34 felonies, and the fact that Bragg has no authority to enforce federal campaign finance law.

But those appeals take time.

The immunity ruling gave Trump the ability to get the guilty verdict tossed in September.

Trump’s lawyers argued to Judge Merchan that he should vacate the verdict.

“The record is clear: DANY was wrong, very wrong,” Trump’s attorneys’ motion read.

“Be that as it may, Your Honor now has the authority to address these injustices, and the Court is duty-bound to do so in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” the motion continued.

“In order to vindicate the Presidential immunity doctrine, and protect the interests implicated by its underpinnings, the jury’s verdicts must be vacated and the Indictment dismissed,” the filing added.

Why the ruling is bad for Bragg

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig laid out the case as to why the immunity ruling blew up Bragg’s verdict.

Honig wrote of the trial record that “it also included key events that happened after he took office: conversations with White House communications director Hope Hicks, tweets sent from the official White House account, and a financial-disclosure form required of the president.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling said it would take a very dim view of lower courts criminalizing presidential conduct, so the pressure is on the lower courts to comply with the ruling.

Merchan is a partisan activist, so Honig doesn’t think Merchan is likely to go along with the immunity ruling.

But Honig explained the New York Court of Appeals or even the Supreme Court is likely to throw this joke verdict out.

“But will the appellate courts — including, potentially, the Supreme Court itself — see it the same way? If communications between the president and DOJ are automatically immune, and talks between the president and vice-president are presumptively immune, are talks between the president and his White House communications director all that different?” Honig wondered.

Conservative Reboot