Obstructing an official proceeding
It was enacted as part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 in reaction to the Enron scandal, and closed a legal loophole on who could be charged with evidence tampering by defining the new crime very broadly.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in Fischer v. United States that the statute could only be applied when the defendant impaired a physical document or object used in an official proceeding or attempted to do so, a higher bar for conviction than had been used in trials to that point.
[15] In September 2022, the charge was dismissed as part of an agreement requiring Joseph to self-refer to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct for possible disciplinary action.
[16] As of December 2022, about 290 out of over 910 defendants associated with the January 6 United States Capitol attack had been charged with obstructing an official proceeding, with over 70 convicted.
[1] Those who have pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding include "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley,[1] Olympic medalist Klete Keller,[18] musician Jon Schaffer,[19] Proud Boys member Nicholas Ochs,[20] and Ronald Sandlin.
On March 8, 2022, in the first criminal trial of a Capitol attack defendant, Three Percenters member Guy Reffitt became the first to be convicted of obstructing an official proceeding, along with other charges.
[33][34] In March 2022, in Eastman v. Thompson, a civil case regarding the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack's subpoena of John Eastman's emails, Judge David O. Carter of the District Court for the Central District of California ruled that there was a preponderance of then evidence that Trump had conspired to obstruct the January 6 joint session of Congress.
[1][40][41][42] However, on March 7, Carl J. Nichols became the first federal judge to rule that the law was not applicable to the Capitol attack, on the basis that the word "otherwise" in the statute required that the conduct must involve "some action with respect to a document, record, or other object".
The ruling permitted the three challenged cases to continue on the basis that, as they were also charged with assaulting police, there was no question that they had acted with corrupt intent.
[49] Judge Gregory Katsas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he said the pertinent part of the statute is limited to acts that “hinder the flow of truthful evidence to a proceeding.”[51] In December 2023, the Supreme Court agreed to hear one of the three cases as Fischer v. United States.
[52][53] In June 2024, it ruled in favor of Fischer that the charge only applied when "the defendant impaired the availability or integrity... of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.
[58][59] Another appeal, United States v. Brock, ruled in March 2024 that a sentencing penalty for substantial interference with the administration of justice did not apply to the conduct during the January 6 attack.
