DOJ Dropping Charges in Nearly Half of Pending Obstruction Cases
We knew the Supreme Court decision was going to have a major impact on the J6 cases regarding obstruction.
However, I doubt anyone expected that impact to be this big.
It is now being reported that the charges in nearly half of the pending cases are being dropped.
Drop the Charges
Now, don’t get the idea that most of these defendants are going to walk free because the DOJ went after every one of these people with everything they had.
To that point, after the charges were dropped, the DOJ stated, “There are zero cases where a defendant was charged only for violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512.
“In other words, even if the government foregoes this charge, every charged defendant will continue to face exposure to other criminal charges.”]
To that comment, there are no pending cases involving only obstruction, but there have already been 17 cases prosecuted in which only obstruction charges were filed.
Many of the cases that were prosecuted are now being re-examined for lesser sentences or the dismissal of the obstruction charges.
Of the 126 cases that were pending, 60 of those had their obstruction charges wholly dismissed.
The DOJ said that obstruction would still be charged in 13 of the cases, leaving 53 more cases that need to be reviewed.
This news will obviously be received well in Trump’s circle, as they have contended from the outset that the J6 defendants were overcharged just to make a point.
Garland himself has stated that they wanted to make an example of these cases to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again.
My only question is why they are not going after other rioters just as hard. We have only seen a fraction of the number of prosecutions arise from the months of rioting that took place during the summer of 2020.