Supreme Court makes it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, charge Trump faces

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Supreme Court makes it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, charge Trump faces

2024-06-29 06:49 Last Updated At：07:10

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday limited a federal obstruction law that has been used to charge hundreds of Capitol riot defendants as well as former President Donald Trump.

The justices ruled 6-3 that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp., must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. Only some of the people who violently attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fall into that category.

The overwhelming majority of the approximately 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to Capitol riot-related federal crimes were not charged with obstruction and will not be affected by the outcome.

Still, the decision is likely to be used as fodder for claims by Trump and his Republican allies that the Justice Department has treated the Capitol riot defendants unfairly.

It's unclear how the court's decision will affect the case against Trump in Washington, which includes charges other than obstruction. Special counsel Jack Smith has said the charges faced by the former president would not be affected.

Trump's case is on hold while the Supreme Court considers a separate case in which Trump is claiming immunity from prosecution. A decision is expected on Monday.

Under the ruling issued Friday, dozens of defendants could seek new sentences, ask to withdraw guilty pleas, or have charges dropped. Most defendants convicted of obstruction were also convicted of another felony so their sentence may not be significantly impacted - if at all.

The high court returned the case of former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer to a lower court to determine if Fischer could be charged with obstruction. Fischer has been indicted for his role in disrupting Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.

Fischer is among about 350 people who have been charged with obstruction. Some pleaded guilty to — or were convicted of — lesser charges.

Republicans, who have cast the Jan. 6 defendants as victims of political persecution, are certain to seize on the ruling to argue the rioters have been unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department. Trump has embraced Jan. 6 defendants on the campaign trial, and floated pardons for the rioters if he wins in November.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, described the decision as a “great thing.”

“Free the J6 hostages now,” he said. “They should free them now for what they’ve gone through. They’ve been waiting for this decision for a long time. They’ve been waiting for a long time. And that was a great answer. That is a great thing for people that have been so horribly treated. ”

It’s also likely to slow down cases in a court already clogged with Jan. 6 defendants as judges are forced to grapple with how to apply the ruling.

“It’s going to be a big mess,” said Randall Eliason, a professor at George Washington University Law School and former federal prosecutor in Washington.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's opinion, joined by conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former federal public defender who also wrote a separate opinion.

Reading the obstruction statute broadly "would also criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists to decades in prison,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Barrett, one of three justices appointed by Trump, wrote that the law clearly encompasses the events of Jan. 6. “The riot forced Congress to suspend the proceeding, delaying it for several hours,” she wrote.

She said her colleagues in the majority did “textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach” of the obstruction law.

Roberts, Jackson and Barrett made strikingly different word choices in their opinions. While Roberts described the attack as a “breach of the Capitol,” Barrett described the events as a riot and the participants as rioters. Jackson wrote that “an angry mob stormed the United States Capitol.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was disappointed with the decision, which he said “limits an important federal statute.” Still, Garland said the cases against the “vast majority” of people charged in the attack won’t be affected.

“January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government — the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” he said. “We will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”

Roughly 170 Capitol insurrection defendants have been convicted of obstructing or conspiring to obstruct the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, including the leaders of two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. A number of defendants have had their sentencings delayed until after the justices rule on the matter.

Some rioters have even won early release from prison while the appeal was pending over concerns that they might end up serving longer than they should have if the Supreme Court ruled against the Justice Department. They include 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.

Seventeen of the 18 trial 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.

Alito and Thomas rejected calls that they step aside from the Jan. 6 case because of questions raised about their impartiality.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which has handled Jan. 6 prosecutions, said no one who has been convicted of or charged with obstruction will be completely cleared because of the ruling. Every defendant also has other felony or misdemeanor charges, or both, prosecutors said.

For around 50 people who were convicted, obstruction was the only felony count, prosecutors said. Of those, roughly two dozen who still are serving their sentence are most likely to be affected by the ruling.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes.

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Alanna Durkin Richer, Rebecca Santana and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report. Colvin reported from New York.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

French voters propel far-right National Rally to strong lead in first-round legislative elections

2024-07-01 06:47 Last Updated At：06:51

PARIS (AP) — The far-right National Rally leaped into a strong lead Sunday in France's first round of legislative elections, polling agencies projected, bringing the party closer to being able to form a government in round two and dealing a major slap to centrist President Emmanuel Macron and his risky decision to call the surprise ballot.

When he dissolved the National Assembly on June 9, after a stinging defeat at the hands of the National Rally in French voting for the European Parliament, Macron gambled that the anti-immigration party with historical links to antisemitism wouldn't repeat that success when France's own fate was in the balance.

But it didn't work out that way. With French polling agencies projecting that the National Rally and its allies got about one-third of the national vote on Sunday, Macron's prime minister warned that France could end up with its first far-right government since World War II if voters don't come together to thwart that scenario in round two next Sunday.

“The extreme right is at the doors of power,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. He twice described National Rally policy pledges as “disastrous” and said that in the second-round ballot, “not one vote should go to the National Rally. France does not deserve that."

French polling agencies' projections put Macron’s grouping of centrist parties a distant third in the first-round ballot, behind both the National Rally and a new left-wing coalition of parties that joined forces to keep it from winning power.

Securing a parliamentary majority would enable National Rally leader Marine Le Pen to install her 28-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, as prime minister and would crown her yearslong rebranding effort to make her party less repellent to mainstream voters. She inherited the party, then called the National Front, from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has multiple convictions for racist and antisemitic hate speech.

Still, the National Rally isn’t there yet. With another torrid week of campaigning to come before the decisive final voting next Sunday, the election’s ultimate outcome remains uncertain.

Addressing a jubilant crowd waving French tricolor flags of blue, white and red, Le Pen called on her supporters and voters who didn't back her party in the first round to push it over the line and give it a commanding legislative majority. That scenario would force Bardella and Macron into an awkward power-sharing arrangement. Macron, first elected in 2017, has said he will not step down before his second term expires in 2027.

“The French have almost wiped out the ‘Macronist’ bloc,” Le Pen said. The results, she added, showed voters’ “willingness to turn the page after 7 years of contemptuous and corrosive power.”

Early official results showed some remarkable far-right successes. Le Pen herself was one of six National Rally candidates that won their races outright in the Pas-de-Calais, a once heavily industrialized region of northern France, securing more than 50% of the vote in their districts on Sunday, meaning they won't face a second-round ballot. National Rally candidates were also ahead in all of the region's six other districts heading into round two.

In Le Pen's district, 54-year-old voter Magali Quere said she used to find the far right scary "but not anymore.”

Only the second round will make clear whether Le Pen’s party and its allies get the absolute majority they would need to comfortably form a government and then start to implement their promises to dismantle many of Macron's key policies and foreign policy platforms. That would include stopping French deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion. The National Rally has historical ties to Russia.

The far right's more confrontational approach to the European Union, its plans to roll back Macron's pension reforms and National Rally promises to boost voters' spending power without clearly detailing how it would pay for the pledge could also spook European financial markets.

National Rally opponents fear for civil liberties if it takes power. Macron himself warned that the far right could set France on a path to civil war. Its plans to boost police powers and curb immigration also alarm many, including minorities. The National Rally has long been hostile toward France’s Muslim community.

"People don’t understand that this will impact us for years and years. This is a France of hate that is growing, not a France of solidarity and union,” said Cynthia Fefoheio, a 19-year-old political science student who was among thousands of people who gathered Sunday night at Paris’ République plaza to protest the National Rally.

Some polling agency projections indicated that in a best-case scenario for the far right, the National Rally and its allies could collectively clear the bar of 289 seats needed for a secure majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.

But it might also fall short and no single bloc may end up with a clear majority, polling agencies projected. Predictions are difficult because of the two-round voting system.

Already on Sunday night, the far-right's opponents were strategizing how to concentrate votes against the National Rally in round two, planning in some districts to pull their candidates out to increase the chances of another candidate beating a far-right rival.

The high turnout — at least 66%, according to polling estimates — reversed nearly three decades of tumbling voter interest for the first round of legislative elections in France. That so many people voted, especially as many are preparing to start or have already started traditional summer vacations, showed how the quick campaign and its high stakes galvanized the electorate. Many voters saw an opportunity to impose a government on Macron, to reprimand his presidency and force a change in course.

Many voters are frustrated with inflation and other economic concerns, as well as with Macron. The National Rally tapped that discontent, notably via online platforms such as TikTok. It campaigned heavily on the rising cost of living and immigration. The campaign was marred by rising hate speech.

“People don't like what has been happening,” said Cynthia Justine, 44. “People feel they've lost a lot in recent years. People are angry. I am angry.”

“Because I am a Black woman, it's even more important. A lot is at stake on this day," she added.

The National Rally has questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France, and it wants to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality. Critics say that undermines human rights and is a threat to France’s democratic ideals.

At the election celebration in Le Pen's stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, 41-year-old Edouard Guillebot said the far right's success had been a long time coming.

“This is a revenge of the people against the elites, in the media and politics,” he said. “I am of those who have voted for everyone. They lied to us by telling us immigration was a chance for the country.”

Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Nice, France, and Diane Jeantet in Henin-Beaumont, France, contributed to this report.

Follow AP's coverage of elections at https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections