(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Nichols Ruling Tossing Obstruction Charges For Insurrectionists Was Overturned On Appeal Today [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-07 I’ve been anticipating this ruling... CNN The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Justice Department’s use of a key criminal charge against hundreds of January 6 rioters, saying they can be charged with obstructing Congress. The appeals court said obstruction can include a “wide range of conduct” when a defendant has a corrupt intent and is targeting an official proceeding, such as the congressional certification of the presidential election on January 6, 2021. (snip) The circuit court’s opinion – which is now binding precedent in DC federal courts, unless additional appeals change the ruling – could potentially be used against future defendants in January 6-related cases, including ones being looked at by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies. “The dissenting opinion says a defendant can act ‘corruptly’ only if the benefit he intends to procure is a ‘financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage.’ I am not so sure,” Walker wrote. “Besides, this case may involve a professional benefit. The Defendants’ conduct may have been an attempt to help Donald Trump unlawfully secure a professional advantage – the presidency.” It’s not as decisive as I’d hoped… NBC News The opinion was written by U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Florence Y. Pan, a Biden appointee, and joined in part by Justin R. Walker, a Trump appointee who was just 38 when he became the youngest judge to sit on the powerful appellate court in several decades, after serving less than a year as a federal judge in Kentucky. Judge Gregory G. Katsas, who served as Trump's deputy White House Counsel for the first year of his presidency, dissented. Walker, in his concurrence, said that the government “must show that the Defendants ‘corruptly’ obstructed the certification of the Electoral College vote” and that it wasn’t “outside the realm of possibility” that prosecutors could do so. “For example, it might be enough for the Government to prove that a defendant used illegal means (like assaulting police officers) with the intent to procure a benefit (the presidency) for another person (Donald Trump),” Walker wrote. The case is likely to result in further litigation. More than 308 defendants have faced the obstruction charge, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Jan. 6 participants could ask the entire appeals court to review the statute’s use against Capitol riot defendants (though such en banc hears are rare), and potentially bring the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeal was filed the same day Mar-a-Lago got raided... WUSA9 Federal prosecutors appealed a district court judge’s ruling on a critical obstruction charge Monday and asked the D.C. Circuit Court to reinstate those counts against three defendants charged in the Capitol riot. The filing consolidates appeals in the cases against Garrett Miller, Joseph Fischer and Edward Jacob Lang, who are all facing multiple felony counts stemming from the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building. Prosecutors on Monday asked the appeals court to reinstate the most serious of those felony counts – obstruction of an official proceeding – after U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols dismissed them earlier this year. (snip) Last year, every judge on the D.C. District Court, including Nichols, rejected challenges by Jan. 6 defendants who argued the joint session of Congress was not an official proceeding and that its requirement that a defendant act “corruptly” was unconstitutionally vague. In March, however, and in subsequent hearings, Nichols, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump in 2018, found the charge used by prosecutors required a defendant to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” in order to obstruct that proceeding. Oral arguments were December 12th, mostly about what the word ‘otherwise’ meant... Law & Crime Attorneys for three men accused in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol appeared to rankle judges in oral arguments at a high-stakes appeal that could upend hundreds of cases in the government’s pursuit of those who participated in the deadly riot. The three-judge panel appeared skeptical of the effort to disarm prosecutors of one of their most effective tools in Jan. 6 cases — and throwing hundreds of cases into turmoil in a way that could prove a boon to former President Donald Trump. (snip) In March, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, also a Trump appointee, sided with defendant Miller and dismissed that particular charge. In his ruling, Nichols found that the statute, which Congress enacted in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal, “requires that the defendant have taken some action with respect to a document, record, or other object in order to corruptly obstruct, impede or influence an official proceeding.” Judge Carl Nichols made his shitty ruling on March 7, 2022... Law & Crime At least 10 judges on the D.C. circuit have denied defendants’ motions to dismiss this charge. The motions generally challenged the statute on three grounds: (1) that the Electoral College certification wasn’t an “official proceeding,” (2) the statute wasn’t meant to address the defendant’s behavior, and (3) that the word “corruptly” is unconstitutionally vague. Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed with his colleagues that the Electoral College certification is an official proceeding, but diverged from the other judges after that point. Nichols’ ruling relied on a painstaking analysis of the use of the word “otherwise” in the statute. While other judges in the D.C. district have determined that “otherwise” encompassed a broad range of alleged behavior, Nichols went the other way. He said the placement of the word, the other sections and subsections of the corruption statute, and the legislative history of section (c)(2) all show that Congress intended to proscribe actions similar to the destruction of documents and other evidence. Garrett Miller meanwhile plead guilty to 9 of the 13 charges against him and was sentenced to 38 months in prison in February… [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/7/2162767/-Nichols-Ruling-Tossing-Obstruction-Charges-For-Insurrectionists-Was-Overturned-On-Appeal-Yesterday Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/