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      Colorado’s ruling to disqualify Trump sets up a showdown at supreme court

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      The Colorado ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot because he incited an insurrection on January 6 sets up another high-stakes, highly controversial political intervention by the US supreme court – a conservative-dominated panel to which Trump appointed three stringent rightwingers.Compromised in progressive eyes by those appointments and rulings including the removal of the federal right to abortion, the court was already due to decide whether Trump has immunity from prosecution regarding acts committed as president.Arising from one of four criminal indictments that have generated 91 charges, that case – concerning elected subversion if not incitement of insurrection – has produced intense scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and a hardline conservative also at the centre of an ethics scandal.Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is a hard-right activist who was deeply involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a defeat which according to Trump’s lie was the result of electoral fraud.With the Colorado ruling, calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from cases involving Trump will no doubt increase – and no doubt continue to be ignored.On Tuesday, the progressive strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Justice Thomas will get to weigh in on whether Trump engaged in insurrection for the same plot his own wife helped organise. Extraordinary.”Earlier, in a scene of extraordinary Washington pageantry, Biden addressed Thomas and the other justices at a memorial service for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the court.Speaking at the National Cathedral, the president delivered a passage that would within hours assume greater significance.To O’Connor, Biden said, the court was “the bedrock of America. It was a vital line of defence for the values and the vision of our republic, devoted not to the pursuit of power for power’s sake but to make real the promise of America – the American promise that holds that we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”Citing that need for equality before the law, some prominent observers said the supreme court should uphold the Colorado ruling.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified before the House January 6 committee and has written with the Harvard professor Laurence Tribe on the 14th amendment, called the Colorado ruling “historic”, “masterful” and “brilliant”.“It will be a test of America’s commitment to its democracy, to its constitution and to the rule of law,” Luttig told MSNBC, adding: “Arguably, when it is decided by the supreme court, it will be the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history.“… It is an unassailable … decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution.”But others were not so supportive.Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor from George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden on grounds of supposed corruption, told Fox News: “This court has handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections. And it’s very, very dangerous.“This country is a powder keg, and this court is throwing matches at it. And I think it’s a real mistake. I think they’re wrong on the law. You know, January 6 was many things, most of it not good. In my view it was not an insurrection, it was a riot.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t mean the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.“This is a time where we actually need democracy. We need to allow the voters to vote to hear their decision. And the court just said, ‘You’re not going to get that in Colorado, we’re not going to let you vote for Donald Trump.’ You can dislike Trump, you can believe he’s responsible for January 6, but this isn’t the way to do it.”Adopted in 1868, section three of the 14th amendment barred former Confederates from office after the civil war. But it has rarely been used. In Trump’s case, much legal argument has centered on whether the presidency counts as an office, as defined in the text. In Colorado, a lower court found that it did not. The state supreme court found that it did. That argument now goes to the highest court in the land.After the Colorado ruling, many observers also pointed out that Trump has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection, or charged with doing so. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection on January 6 but acquitted at trial in the Senate, where enough Republicans stayed loyal.What is clear is that thanks to Colorado, a US supreme court already racked by politics and with historically low approval ratings will once again pitch into the partisan fight. On Tuesday, Trump seized on the Colorado ruling as he has his criminal indictments: as battle cry and fundraising tool. His Republican opponents also slammed the ruling.Last month, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Eric Foner, an expert on the civil war and Reconstruction, spoke to the Guardian about 14th amendment challenges to Trump, including in Colorado. A successful case, Foner said, would be likely to act on Trump like “a red flag in front of a bull”.So, it seems clear, will anything the US supreme court now does regarding the Colorado ruling.On Wednesday a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on his own internet show he expected the court to act quickly, with “the next 10 days … critical in this case” and oral arguments likely by mid-January. His son and co-host, Jordan Sekulow, countered that a slow-moving case could not be counted out. More

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      Trump lashes out after Colorado ruling removing him from ballot

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      The Colorado supreme court ruling on Tuesday that bars Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot has kicked off a firestorm among Republicans and legal scholars, and fury from Trump himself.Though the former president did not address the decision during a rally on Tuesday night in Iowa – where he went on abusive rants against immigration – he posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday. “What a shame for our country!!!” Trump wrote. “A sad day for America!!!”Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which brought the suit in Colorado on behalf of Republican and independent voters, praised the decision. It was, he said, “not only historic and justified, but is also necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”.“Our constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government,” he said.Republicans have largely lined up behind Trump, railing against the ruling for allegedly infringing the right of Americans to choose their leaders.Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from New York, said in a statement: “Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot.”The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledged to drop out of the Republican primary in Colorado, piling pressure on his fellow candidates to do the same or be seen as “tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences from our country”.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is also campaigning for the Republican nomination, voiced an unusual theory that the Colorado decision was in fact a move from Democrats to incite Trump’s base and deliberately help him win the primary.“They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election’s going to be all this legal stuff,” DeSantis said on Wednesday, according to NBC News. “It will give [Joe] Biden or the Democrat, whoever, the ability to skate through this thing.”Over the last few months, Trump has been liberally using his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials to further the narrative that Washington is against him, calling on his base for financial support. Trump has already seized on the Colorado ruling for fundraising purposes, posting on Truth Social, “Breaking news: Colorado just removed me from the ballot! Chip in now.”The Colorado court postponed the implementation of its ruling until 4 January, giving room for Trump to make an appeal to the US supreme court. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said on Tuesday night that the campaign has “full confidence that the US supreme court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits”.Despite confidence from Trump’s team that the supreme court would rule in their favor, legal reactions to the Colorado ruling have so far shown just how murky the debate will be.Trump’s Truth Social feed is already reflecting this. On Tuesday night, Trump quoted Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden over nebulous claims of corruption.“This country is a powder keg and this court is just throwing matches at it … for people that say they are trying to protect democracy, this is hands down the most anti-democratic opinion I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Trump quoted Turley as saying on Fox News.But Trump truncated a portion of Turley’s interview where he said that though he believed the Colorado court was wrong, “January 6 was many things, most of it not good”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“In my view, it was not an insurrection. It was a riot,” Turley said. “That doesn’t mean that the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.”The Colorado court ruled that section 3 of the 14th amendment disqualifies Trump from office because the section – referred to as the insurrection clause – bars anyone from holding political office if they took an oath to uphold the constitution but “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. The section was included in the constitution after the civil war to prevent Confederate leaders from holding office in the government they had rebelled against.Turley’s argument is that while Trump incited a riot, it technically does not amount to the insurrection specified in the 14th amendment.“If you dislike Trump, you believe he’s responsible for January 6 … this isn’t the way to do it,” he said.This is just one of the points that will be debated if Trump’s appeal is taken up by the supreme court, which has been facing an onslaught of accusations of politics in the court. As much as the Colorado ruling puts a spotlight on Trump, it will also set up the US supreme court – which has historically tried to maintain itself as a neutral arbiter of the law – to take on yet another case entrenched in politics.Trump appointed three out of the court’s nine current justices, cementing a six-to-three conservative majority in the court that has overturned abortion and affirmative action in the last three years. The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has also been facing criticism over the last year for taking gifts and vacations from billionaires, as well as for the conservative activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas.The court is also set to rule on another Trump appeal, which will decide whether he is immune from prosecution over any charges that come from his Washington DC criminal trial over the January 6 insurrection.Regardless of whether the Colorado ruling is upheld, the debate will probably force close scrutiny of Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attack. Trump maintains that the more than 1,000 people who were arrested after the attack, including 600 who were eventually sentenced, are political prisoners. He also continues to argue that the 2020 election was stolen, a belief that incited those who carried out the January 6 attack in the first place.“Election interference!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday night. More

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      Joe Biden hails Sandra Day O’Connor as ‘American pioneer’ in eulogy

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      Joe Biden hailed Sandra Day O’Connor as an “American pioneer” who embodied principle over politics in his eulogy at the Washington funeral of the US supreme court’s first female justice.The president praised O’Connor for breaking down barriers in the legal and political worlds, transcending political divisions and weighing ordinary people in her decision-making in pointed remarks that contrasted sharply with his words about the current supreme court.“She was especially conscious of the law’s real impact on people’s lives,” he said. “One need not agree with all her decisions in order to recognize that her principles were deeply held and of the highest order and that her desire for civility was genuine.“O’Connor knew that “no person is an island” and that Americans – “rugged individualists, adventurers and entrepreneurs” – were inextricably linked, he said at the service in Washington National Cathedral.“And for America to thrive, Americans must see themselves not as enemies, but as partners in the great work of deciding our collective destiny,” Biden said.Tributes to O’Connor, who died on 1 December aged 93, were also delivered by chief justice John Roberts and O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor.Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor served until her retirement in 2006.She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.The supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022 and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden has said the current supreme court has done more to “unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history” but has rejected calls to expand it.Chief justice Roberts called her a “strong, influential and iconic jurist”.Jay O’Connor spoke of his mother as an indefatigable woman with “unearthly energy” who kept working long after she hung up her judicial robes.“We thank you, we love you, we will never, ever forget you.” More

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      Appeals court rejects Mark Meadows’s bid to move Georgia elections case

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      A US appeals court has ruled that the election interference case against the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must stay in state court in Georgia and not move to federal court as he requested.Meadows had attempted to transfer his 2020 election interference case in the state to federal court, but the court had expressed doubt in his argument that he was acting as a federal official in trying to reverse Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Meadows has been charged with violating the Georgia racketeering statute, alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.More details soon … More

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      in US Politics

      Trump seeks to dismiss Georgia election case by claiming political speech

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      Donald Trump’s lawyer asked a judge on Monday to throw out the Georgia criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, contending the indictment violated the former president’s first amendment rights by charging him for so-called core political speech.The motion to dismiss the election interference case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, was similar in scope and theory to Trump’s request to throw out the federal indictment in Washington DC that was rejected this month.Trump’s filing, submitted after a court hearing on the issue, directly attacked the charges that he and his allies violated Georgia’s racketeering statute in trying to reverse his 2020 election defeat, including his 2 January 2021 call pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes.The 19-page motion sought to reframe the indictment as an attempt to criminalize Trump’s political speech, arguing that the former president’s repeated lies that widespread fraud corrupted the vote count were supposedly aimed at prompting investigations by state legislatures.“It was directed at the bodies responsible for conducting government business, the bodies with the information in their possession, the bodies undertaking the investigations, and the bodies vested with the authority of adjudicating such complaints,” Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow wrote.The motion also argued that Trump’s claims of election fraud were protected by the constitution’s first amendment because the US supreme court had previously decided the government could not criminalize speech on disputed political issues just because it determined the views to be false.“The first amendment prohibits the state from weaponizing its powers to silence disfavored viewpoints or prevent people from advocating such viewpoints to government officials,” Sadow wrote.Trump probably faces a steep uphill battle to have the case dismissed, especially after the US district judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington DC earlier denied Trump’s near-identical motion to dismiss with a detailed 48-page opinion that cut down the same first amendment claims.Chutkan wrote in her decision even if Trump was right that his statements disputing the outcome of the 2020 election were true, “core political speech” did not immunize him from prosecution if it was used in furtherance of criminal activity.The decision also found that it was misguided for Trump to rely on the supreme court precedent in United States v Alvarez – that the Stolen Valor Act, which prohibits an individual from falsely claiming they received a medal for serving in the military, violated the first amendment.The stolen valor case was not helpful to Trump, Chutkan suggested, because the supreme court did not undermine settled precedent allowing prosecutors to charge cases where speech was used to advance a crime.Trump and the original 18 co-defendants in August pleaded not guilty to the racketeering charges. In the weeks that followed, the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as the local GOP operative Scott Hall, took plea deals and became witnesses cooperating with the prosecution.The Fulton county district attorney’s office does not intend to offer plea deals to Trump and at least two of his top allies, including his ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Guardian reported last month. More

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      in US Politics

      Clarence Thomas’s salary complaints sparked rightwing fears he would resign

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      Clarence Thomas told a Republican congressman that US supreme court justices should get a pay raise or “one or more” would quit, prompting “a flurry of activity” among rightwingers because his “importance as a conservative was paramount”, ProPublica said in its latest hard-hitting report on questionable ethics at the high court.Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican Thomas spoke to in 2000, told the non-profit newsroom: “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”At the time, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, would have nominated a replacement if any justice had resigned. Republicans held the Senate, which would have conducted the confirmation.ProPublica said Thomas spoke to Stearns on a flight after giving a speech at Awakening, a “‘conservative thought weekend’ featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials”, held in Sea Island, Georgia, in January 2000.Thomas’s trip was paid for by event organisers, ProPublica said, adding that the justice’s reported 11 free trips on his annual disclosure form that year but not the trip to Awakening, “an apparent violation of federal disclosure law”.Thomas’s finances have come under the spotlight this year, with ProPublica publishing a series of in-depth reports, stirring an ethics scandal.He took and largely failed to declare gifts from Republican donors including luxury travel and resort stays, school fees and a property purchase.An arch-conservative on a panel dominated 6-3 by the right, Thomas has been in place since a 1991 confirmation dominated by allegations of sexual harassment.Responding to reports by ProPublica and other outlets, he has denied wrongdoing and pledged to conform to disclosure rules. Progressives have called for him to resign or be impeached and removed – vanishingly unlikely outcomes with the court in conservative hands and Republicans holding the House and contesting the Senate.ProPublica said the justice was struggling financially at the time of his conversation with Stearns. The site published a letter dated 11 January 2000 in which the congressman told the justice: “Just a note to let you know how much I enjoyed visiting with you on the flight back from Jacksonville to Dulles.“I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the supreme court. As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted. We must have the proper incentives here, too.”Stearns quoted the philosopher Immanuel Kant, telling Thomas to “have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived”.On Monday, responses to the ProPublica story included the former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann calling Thomas a “loyal judicial prostitute”.Stearns sought help from a lobbying firm and spoke in the House. Thomas’s suggestion that resignations might be imminent reached judicial administrators. The then chief justice, William Rehnquist, said in his annual report: “The most pressing issue facing the judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries”.Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky (now minority leader), proposed removing a ban on paid speeches by justices. That effort failed, and supreme court salaries have not changed, bar keeping up with inflation.But ProPublica also reported that “during his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved.” The justice received a $1.5m advance for his memoir and gifts from rich individuals.In a public appearance in June 2019, Thomas was asked about court salaries.“Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas said. “My wife [the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas] and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”ProPublica said: “A few weeks later, Thomas boarded [the mega-donor Harlan] Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162ft yacht.”In a statement, Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, said the ProPublica report showed again how Thomas “has long seen his position on our nation’s highest court as a way to upgrade his own lifestyle”.Ciccone said: “When the court itself wasn’t providing him with the luxury perks he wanted, his billionaire benefactor social circle stepped in to make it happen.“Justice Thomas, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo [of the Federalist Society, a key figure in rightwing activism around the US judiciary] and other key players in this corruption crisis may believe they exist above the law – but they don’t. With public trust at record lows, it’s far past time to restore credibility and integrity to our high court.” More

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      Appeals court skeptical of Meadows’ bid to move Georgia election case

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      A federal appeals court on Friday appeared skeptical of former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ attempt to transfer his 2020 election interference case in Georgia to federal court, expressing doubt that he was acting as a federal official in trying to reverse Donald Trump’s defeat.The court also questioned, in a particularly ominous development for Meadows, whether he was even entitled to remove his case from state to federal court given he was no longer a federal official.Meadows was charged with violating the state racketeering statute alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.The indictment also included a charge against Meadows for his role in setting up Trump’s infamous recorded phone call on 2 January 2021 asking the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes so he could win the battleground state.Meadows filed to transfer his case to federal court – a move that would allow him to seek dismissal of the charges on federal immunity grounds – but had the motion rejected by the US district judge Steve Jones. Meadows then appealed to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.The issue for Meadows has long been whether his involvement in the call or his involvement in the so-called fake electors scheme were within the scope of his official duties as a White House chief of staff, as he argued, or whether he was engaged in campaign activity, as prosecutors have argued.At a roughly 50-minute hearing before circuit judges William Pryor, Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu – George W Bush, Obama and Biden appointees, respectively – the court expressed deep skepticism that Meadows could declare all of his actions as White House chief of staff were related to his official duties.“That just cannot be right,” Rosenbaum said at one stage, saying “electioneering on behalf of a specific political candidate” or becoming involved in “an alleged effort to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” might be examples of actions not covered by a federal official’s job.The skepticism of Meadows’ sweeping position that there were no limits to the scope of his duties was joined by Abudu, who noted that other federal laws like the Hatch Act prohibits government officials from engaging in political activity as part of their federal duties.Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger responded that Meadows only needed, under the federal officer removal statute, to “establish a nexus” to the duties of his federal job. It would make “no sense”, Terwilliger said, to have a state judge decide at trial matters relating to federal laws.The hearing took a negative turn for Meadows when Pryor, the chief judge known to be a staunch conservative, suggested he did not think Meadows was entitled to have his case moved to federal court at all because Meadows was no longer a federal official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPryor suggested it might be reasonable to infer that Congress intended the removal statute to apply only to current federal officials to make sure that state charges did not interfere with “ongoing operations of the federal government”.Still, the three-judge panel also expressed concern to Donald Wakeford, a prosecutor in the Fulton county district attorney’s office, about the “chilling effect” on federal officials to enact policy if they felt they could be indicted by state authorities once they left the government.That opening was seized upon by Terwilliger, who claimed he would have done his job differently when he was deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.Wakeford responded that it might be a good thing if some federal officials felt chilled from engaging in certain conduct – a reference to an opinion in a recent ruling by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan rejecting Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal election interference case in Washington. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s election-interference case may get boost from US supreme court

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      A decision by the US supreme court to take a case linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol could have consequences altering the trajectory of the criminal case against Donald Trump over his effort to overturn the 2020 election as well as for hundreds of other people prosecuted for the riot.The nation’s highest court has agreed to consider whether federal prosecutors can charge January 6 riot defendants with a statute that makes it a crime to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress – a charge also filed against Trump in his 2020 election-interference case.The decision by the conservative-dominated court to take up the matter complicates and could delay Trump’s trial in federal district court in Washington, which is currently scheduled for next March.The supreme court’s eventual ruling in Fischer v United States will indicate whether the obstruction charge under section 1512 of title 18 of the US criminal code can be used against Trump, and could undercut the other general conspiracy charges brought against the former president by the special counsel, Jack Smith.The court could also end up by extension invalidating many convictions against rioters involved in the January 6 Capitol attack. The obstruction statute has been the justice department’s primary weapon to hold accountable those involved in the violence of that day.The case involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted in Washington on seven counts of obstructing the congressional certification of the 2020 election results when he assaulted police officers during the riot.Fischer sought to dismiss part of his indictment, arguing that the obstruction statute passed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, had to do with document or evidence tampering for white-collar financial crime.The US district judge Carl Nichols, who presided in the case, interpreted the statute as requiring prosecutors to show that the defendant took some action with respect to a document or record and did not apply to Fischer as he assaulted police officers at the Capitol.But a split three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit reversed the decision, deciding that obstruction applied more broadly and encompassed impeding any official proceeding. Fischer, and two other January 6 defendants, appealed to the supreme court to resolve the issue.The supreme court may not decide whether the obstruction statute can be applied to the Capitol attack until June, when the next term ends. In the meantime, the viability of that charge – and potentially that of other general conspiracy charges – against Trump remains uncertain.It could also give Trump an opening to seek to pause ongoing pre-trial proceedings in his 2020 election interference case pending the supreme court’s consideration of the issue, although he is unlikely to succeed and it may not be appealable should such an effort be denied.Similar criminal cases involving members of Congress or congressional aides, for instance, typically go to trial and are then tried again if a higher court finds that some of the charges were inapplicable.At issue for Trump is the definition of “corruptly” in the obstruction statute. The DC circuit has been unable to agree, with judge Justin Walker interpreting it as “unlawful benefit”, while judge Greg Katsas interpreted it as “an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage”.The obstruction statute was never a natural fit for January 6 cases, and defense lawyers have repeatedly argued in trial and appeals courts in Washington that the justice department was using it in an overly broad fashion to target rioters because of the 20-year maximum sentence it carries.The problem for the justice department now is that the supreme court has previously chafed at the use of broad conspiracy arguments by federal prosecutors.In the case of Jeffrey Skilling in the Enron scandal, the court held in a unanimous decision that Skilling had been improperly charged with the “honest services” provision of the statute about a scheme to defraud, because it applied only to accepting bribes and kickbacks.“The court’s been very clear that over-aggressive theories under general criminal statutes don’t fly,” said the former House general counsel Stanley Brand, whose firm Brand Woodward has also represented January 6 defendants. “That’s the lesson of Skilling and all these other cases.”If the supreme court were to rule in favor of Fischer next year on the basis that the justice department was using charges that were too broad, Brand added, it could undercut the other general conspiracy statutes used in the indictment against Trump, as well. More