@Donkey Deac Doug I'd love to hear your thoughts on Fischer vs US?
Oral argument was interesting, but I think trying to read tea leaves from OA is a perfect example of: "those who live by the crystal ball best learn how to eat glass."
There's an opportunity for the Court to address "corruptly." This issue was litigated extensively at the district court level. It's a good argument. The DOJ doesn't really need 1512 for most of these prosecutions though. The 231s, 111s, and 1752s are enough.
Moreover, it feels like the VAST majority of the J6 cases are already through the pipeline and, while there will be those who benefit from 1512 being knocked out, it's going to be a hollow victory for like 80% of those impacted. They will have either already served their time or will have another felony offense that supports their sentence.
The real folks on pins and needles are the DC District Court Judges. They are looking at this decision thinking, "motherfuckin' SCOTUS, if you fuck us on this, it's going to cause SO MUCH WORK." DCD is already totally fucking swamped. It was a district that pushed like 200 criminal cases a year, and then in 2021, the DOJ was like, "...hey. Psst. Hey Judges. Hey. Pssst. We're going prosecute by Indictment an extra 1,400 people in the next 2.5 years. hthxoxo kthxbai."
The number of procedrual mechanisms that just straight up didn't work was kinda interesting to watch.
Like, the bail reform act is what governs pre-trial release. Early on, the DCD was like, "ok, we're not having all these detention hearings. DOJ, come up with a process that lets us batch these people through the system." So they came up with this system where they let 95% of people go, but just added a pretrial condition of, "you can't come back to DC unless it's for court." It was a very coarse way to comply with the BRA.
What'll be interesting to see is what happens as the J6 prosecutions taper off. It'll be like a gargantuan dick sliding out of an overused butthole that's lost it's plasticity. I have no idea how they are going to shed all of the soon-to-be-unnecessary stretched out government employee flesh. For example, DOJ hired a legion of temporary AUSAs. No idea what happens to them afterward.