In huge news for defendants who have either been convicted of or face conviction for allegedly obstructing Congress, 11 J6 defendants convicted under 1512(c) of the federal code, the obstruction of an official proceeding clause, have had their convictions vacated and their cases remanded by the DC appellate court. This follows a similar, early summer ruling from the Supreme Court.
18 U.S. Code § 1512, for reference, provides, “(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.”
(c)(2) has been used to prosecute many of the January 6 defendants, with the government alleging that their trespass into the Capitol obstructed an official proceeding and, as such, was illegal and prosecutable under that section of the code. Now, however, that might be coming to an end given the DC appellate court ruling.
Julie Kelly, drawing attention to the matter on X, wrote, “WOW: Yesterday the DC appellate court vacated the 1512(c)(2) convictions of 11 J6 defendants including Guy Reffitt, the first J6ers convicted at trial. What a total humiliation of the DOJ and 17 DC judges (including Pan) who allowed this wrongful prosecution to happen in the 1st place.”
The court document Kelly shared provided, “Upon consideration of the joint motion to govern further proceedings, it is ORDERED that appellant’s conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) be vacated and the case be remanded for further proceedings. Pursuant to D.C. Circuit Rule 36, this disposition will not be published. The Clerk is directed to issue the mandate forthwith to the district court.”
Commenters on Kelly’s post celebrated the news and hammered the prosecutions of the defendants. One, for example, wrote, “In the cases of these prisoners, I’m all for reparations. These people have lost too much.” Kelly responded by saying, “Totally agree. GOP and/or Trump DOJ must establish a J6 Victims Fund.”
On a different note, one commenter expressed doubt that the judges involved in the overturned sentence care about the rebuke, saying, “I bet every one of them judges just shrug their shoulders and moved on to their next corrupt case. They don’t care that the verdict got overturned, it’s not about the conviction, it’s about the process.”
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Somewhat similarly, another commenter argued that the code section used for prosecution wasn’t proper for this situation, saying, “Yes. The DOJ stretched the code section to cover events it was not applicable to and the judges allowed them to do so. Reading the statute, it was passed for document destruction obstruction of justice. Not any other action the DOJ deemed it applicable to.”
Another commenter noted that, oddly, X (formerly Twitter) had labelled the court document “adult content” and screened it from view, saying, “Why is this labeled adult content? Is X on a censoring binge? The hilarious video of Swalwell whining about an image of Trump protecting animals seems to have struck a nerve.” That is a reference to Rep. Swalwell’s Congressional meltdown over a meme. Here is a picture of the seemingly censored post:
Watch Rep. Loudermilk speak about going after the J6 committee here: