The Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) has backed down on nearly half of its pending obstruction charges against January 6 defendants, following a Supreme Court ruling making it harder to pursue such charges. Many January 6 defendants were prosecuted for obstructing an official proceeding—namely, Congress’s certification of the 2020 electoral votes.
However, the Supreme Court ruled that this was an abuse of the relevant statute, originally intended to punish people for actions such as destroying documents to impede financial crime investigations in the wake of the Enron scandal.
Last week, the DOJ dropped obstruction charges in about 60 of 126 pending cases. They plan to proceed with charges against 13 defendants but are still deciding on the remainder. For those already tried, the DOJ has agreed to dismiss 40 of 133 obstruction charges, with reviews ongoing for the rest.
The DOJ is trying to downplay these moves, saying, “There are zero cases where a defendant was charged only for [obstruction of an official proceeding],” so “even if the government foregoes this charge, every charged defendant will continue to face exposure to other criminal charges.”