SCOTUS TAKES UP J6 CASE
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Jan. 6 defendant’s appeal of the Department of Justice’s novel use of evidence-tampering law to prosecute hundreds of defendants for obstruction of Congress.
The case will look at whether the U.S. Court of Appeal for the D.C. Circuit improperly applied an Enron-era federal charge, “obstruction of an official proceeding,” to Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Wayne Fischer.
DOJ has used that law, which carries a 20-year maximum sentence, to prosecute hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants. It is also the basis for two counts of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment in Trump’s federal election case. If SCOTUS overturns the D.C. Circuit’s decision, it could have far-reaching implications for many Jan. 6 defendants and the pace of Trump’s trial.
Separately, Smith is asking SCOTUS to help him maintain the scheduled March 4, 2024 start date in the DC case by ruling quickly on Trump’s presidential immunity claims. SCOTUS has agreed to fast-track its decision of whether to take up Smith’s petition.
In a minor win for Trump on Wednesday, Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to halt proceedings in Trump’s D.C. trial pending resolution of the presidential immunity issue in the appellate courts.
The federal charge, Section 1512 includes two subsections—(c) and (k)— that inform part of Smith’s indictment against Trump. Section 1512(c) prevents obstructing, impeding, and influencing an official proceeding but contains language that’s prompted debate over how a defendant would violate that portion of U.S. code.
The current version of the Section 1512 was approved by Congress to close a loophole in cases involving evidence tampering. This came in the wake of the Enron accounting and fraud scandals.
The D.C. Circuit ruled against Fischer but with multiple opinions, including one that argued the majority had applied too broad of a reading to Section 1512(c).
“Congress was faced with a very specific loophole: that then-existing criminal statutes made it illegal to cause or induce another person to destroy documents, but did not make it illegal to do so by oneself,” the dissenting jurist, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols wrote in a March 2022 memorandum opinion.
“Congress closed that loop by passing subsection (c), and nothing in the legislative history suggests a broader purpose than that.”
J6 Attorney William Shipley posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that SCOTUS’s decision “to take up the appeal on the 1512 ‘obstruction of an official proceeding’ case means the Trump D.C. case will not be going to trial. This is the easy way to make that happen without directly acting on the Trump case on an expedited basis.”
The DOJ told SCOTUS Fischer’s and other petitions should be denied in part because the appellate court remanded those cases for further review, meaning they’re still pending. It also defended the appellate court’s decision.
Marina Medvin, a defense attorney who co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the challenge of the DOJ’s prosecutions, said the hundreds of J6 cases at issue should never have been felonies.
“If the case turns in favor of the defendants, this will be life-altering for hundreds of people who were unjustly persecuted for a felony offense instead of the misdemeanor that was crafted by Congress for the trespass behavior at issue,” Medvin wrote on X.
Fritz Ulrich, a federal public defender who represents Fischer and filed the Supreme Court petition, told The Epoch Times, “We’re very happy that the court has decided to clarify the scope of Section 1512(c)(2).”
—Sam Dorman and Joseph Hanneman
HUNTER DEFIANT
The House on Wednesday dealt with its ongoing probe into President Joe Biden and the first family on two fronts.
The day began on Capitol Hill abnormally early with the deposition of first son Hunter Biden by the House Oversight Committee initially scheduled for 9:30 a.m.
Instead, with the help of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), the younger Biden spoke to the press outside of the Capitol, refuting GOP claims that his father peddled influence to help his foreign business dealings.
“Let me state as clearly as I can: my father was not financially involved in my business,” Hunter Biden told reporters.
He acknowledged that, while struggling with addiction, “I was extremely irresponsible with my finances. But to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond absurd. It’s shameless.”
Hunter Biden said he would refuse to cooperate with a closed-door deposition, but volunteered to participate in an open hearing with the Oversight Committee.
Refusing to appear, however, violated his subpoena by that panel. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) vowed to hold him in contempt.
“Hunter Biden today defied lawful subpoenas and we will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” the chairmen wrote. “We will not provide special treatment because his last name is Biden.”
Democrats say a public hearing would ensure transparency and help people understand the nature of the investigation, which they say is unwarranted.
But Republicans argue that speaking to Hunter Biden will help them as they investigate President Biden for possible malfeasance when he was vice president and the time between when he left office and when he became president. They’ve said they'll make public a transcript after the interview.
The House GOP has obtained bank records showing that the older Biden received money from Owasco P.C., Hunter Biden’s company. Hunter Biden’s lawyer said the payments were for a truck. Testimony to the House has also put Joe Biden at dinners with his son’s business partners, including Russian individuals, while he was vice president. The White House has said that Joe Biden wasn’t involved with his son’s business.
“There’s no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen,” Hunter Biden said on Tuesday.
He said Republicans have misrepresented the evidence that they’ve obtained.
Jordan noted that the qualifier in Hunter Biden’s statement was the word “financially.”
“That means he was involved. I think that’s how anybody with common sense would read it,“ he said. ”That’s one of the reasons we want to talk to Hunter Biden.”
While his father was vice president, Hunter Biden made millions in business deals in Ukraine, China, and other countries.
Hours after Hunter Biden’s remarks, the House voted on a resolution formally authorizing the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden—a vote that the GOP chairmen said would “strengthen our legal case in the courts as we face obstruction from the White House and witnesses.”
The measure passed the House by a party-line vote of 221–212.
Republicans have subpoenaed or asked a number of Mr. Biden’s former associates to answer questions, including Eric Schwerin, who exchanged emails with Joe Biden in the past, and Tony Bobulinski, who was involved with the family’s business ventures. One subpoena went to Jim Biden, the president’s brother.
Jordan said “there’s a much better chance” of getting testimony from U.S. Department of Justice officials who were involved in the federal probe of Mr. Biden now the resolution is approved.
—Joseph Lord and Zachary Stieber
NDAA ZEROS IN ON CHINA
The Senate on Tuesday passed the annual defense spending bill, sending the package to the House for a vote today.
Along with measures like authorizing a 5.2% pay rise for service members and setting up the collection of UFO records by the National Archives, the bill also mandates a report aimed at improving the nation’s strategic posture in the event of a war with China.
The $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) contains hundreds of references to communist China and its military, and orders the creation of several reports to begin strengthening U.S. defenses in the event of a military conflict with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Most notable among those reports is an assessment of the geopolitical and economic fallout likely to stem from a hypothetical war between the United States and China in 2030.
The report would examine the “range of consequences of war with [China]” in the year 2030, and outline likely avenues of attack, cyber actions, and threats to infrastructure, as well as the global economic consequences of such a war.
It would also seek to project calculated loss of life on both sides, as well as “impacts on the civilian populations of Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The NDAA would also mandate several related research reports, analyses, and Congressional briefings on related matters.
Topics include the risks and implications of a “sustained military blockade” of Taiwan by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and an outline of the regime’s ability to target U.S. military aircraft operating in the Indo-Pacific.
One classified survey is intended to identify the United States’ key operating locations within the First, Second, and Third Island Chains, “that may be used to respond militarily to aggression by [China]” and which are not “sufficiently capable of mitigating damage to aircraft of the United States Armed Forces in the event of a missile, aerial drone, or other form of attack by [China].”
—Andrew Thornebrooke
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- The House votes on the must-pass annual defense policy bill.
- The president will deliver remarks on the administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
- Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers the nomination of Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council’s “Asia Czar”, to be deputy secretary of state.
BOOKMARKS
The health industry is currently grappling with the largest exodus of nurses in four decades. The Epoch Times’ Matt McGregor explored the issue, speaking to several nurses who’ve left the industry due to vaccine mandates and what they described as the corporatization of healthcare.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin sidestepped questions about whether he’ll pursue a bid for the U.S. Senate next year. The Epoch Times’ Jackson Richman reported on the governor’s ambiguous reply even as GOP strategists consider him one of the strongest picks to unseat incumbent and former vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine (R-Va.). The race is one of several where Republicans hope to pick up seats next year.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, garnered a weighty endorsement in her bid for the White House this week from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. Politico called this a “huge blow” for presidential rival Chris Christie, who has banked his whole strategy for the White House on winning New Hampshire.
President Donald Trump issued an urgent call for action to his fellow Republicans after a survey revealed that one in five mail-in voters admitted to committing fraud in the 2020 election. The Epoch Times’ Tom Ozimek reported on the astonishing survey and the former president’s response to it. Trump wrote that it was “the biggest story of the year,” and said, “Republicans must do something about it.”
Publicly, President Joe Biden has been nothing but supportive of his embattled son Hunter Biden amid his ongoing fights with both the judicial system and Congress. But according to a report by Politico, behind closed doors, it’s a different story. “He’s worried,” former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said of Biden’s attitude toward his reelection bid amid his son’s troubles.
