By Robert Weiner and Ben Kearney
Seriously, Supreme Court Conservative justices like Clarence Thomas, you're contending January 6 was not obstruction of an official proceeding? How can you think that when it was blocking the most serious official U.S. proceeding, certifying the Presidential election? The blocking was done successfully for half a day with violence, maiming, and causing deaths, loud chanted death threats to the Speaker of the House and the Vice President, and House members and Senators running for their lives and hiding. Only when the Capitol police, many of whom who were injured and maimed by the obstructors, finally subdued the situation could Congress reconvene late into the night and certify and verify the election.
How is that not an official proceeding that the insurrectionists blocked, as did the people and leader who sent the blockers there to do exactly that?
Supreme Court, you should be ashamed of yourselves if you allow that to be discarded with a legal trick of interpretation for the benefit of one side.
On April 16th, Justice Thomas said in the oral arguments for Fischer vs United, "There have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings. Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past?" There has never been a January 6th where rioters invaded Congress to block the certification of a President, which makes obstruction the valid charge for the obstructors.
The law applies to anyone who "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."
Negating the application of the law is a mistake the Court should not make before it is too late. The precedent could allow a repeat of one of America's most horrible moments that threatened our democracy, and could again.
Robert Weiner was a spokesman in the Clinton and George W. Bush White Houses. He was also the Communications Director of the House Government Operations and Judiciary Committees under Chairman John Conyers, and Senior Aide to Four-Star Gen/Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey and Reps. Charles Rangel, Claude Pepper, Ed Koch, and Sen Ted Kennedy. Ben Kearney is Policy Analyst and Writer at Robert Weiner Associates and Solutions for Change.
