The supreme court on Wednesday said it will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against the former president Donald Trump.
The justices will review an appellate ruling that revived a charge against three defendants accused of obstruction of an official proceeding. The charge refers to the disruption of Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.
That is among four counts brought against Trump in the special counsel Jack Smith’s case that accuses the 2024 Republican presidential primary frontrunner of conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss. Trump is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
The court’s decision to weigh in on the obstruction charge could threaten the start of Trump’s trial, currently scheduled for 4 March. The justices separately are considering whether to rule quickly on Trump’s claim that he cannot be prosecuted for actions taken within his role as president. A federal judge has already rejected that argument.
The supreme court will hear arguments in March or April, with a decision expected by early summer.
The obstruction charge, which carries up to 20 years behind bars, has been brought against more than 300 defendants and is among the most widely used felony charges brought in the huge federal prosecution following the deadly insurrection on 6 January 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to keep Biden, a Democrat, from taking the White House.
At least 152 people have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding, and at least 108 of them have been sentenced, according to an Associated Press review of court records.
A lower-court judge had dismissed the charge against Joseph Fischer, a former Boston police officer, and two other defendants, ruling it did not cover their conduct. The justices agreed to hear the appeal filed by lawyers for Fischer, who is facing a seven-count indictment for his actions on January 6, including the obstruction charge.
The other defendants are Edward Jacob Lang, of New York’s Hudson valley, and Garret Miller, who has since pleaded guilty to other charges and was sentenced to 38 months in prison. Miller, who is from the Dallas area, could still face prosecution on the obstruction charge.
Judge Carl Nichols of the US district court found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.
The justice department challenged that ruling, and the appeals court in Washington DC agreed with prosecutors in April that Nichols’s interpretation of the law was too limited.
Other defendants, including Trump, are separately challenging the use of the charge.
More than 1,200 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot, and more than 700 defendants have pleaded guilty.