'Very unlikely' Trump will get Jan. 6 charges dismissed despite SCOTUS ruling: legal expert

28 June 2024

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) sided with a January 6 rioter in a recent ruling challenging the legality of his charge. Former President Donald Trump is aiming to use that decision to thwart one of the two federal cases against him, but one prominent legal expert is casting doubt on his gambit.

On Friday, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in favor of Joseph W. Fischer, who was charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding when he stormed the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on January 6, 2021. That charge also makes up two of the four felony counts that Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on last year, and the former president's legal team is already planning to file a motion to dismiss those charges.

However, in a recent CNN interview, John Dean — who was a White House counsel in President Richard M. Nixon's administration before becoming a witness against him in the Watergate scandal — was doubtful Trump's challenge would yield the desired result.

"I think it's very unlikely he's gonna get it dismissed," Dean said. "It's a very limited ruling, it's been over-read and overplayed in the media so far, people have gone really into the granular level of looking at the impact of this, and it's going to be very nominal, even on those who have pled guilty."

"Many of them had in their plea that if this ruling went against the existing law, it would not change their status, so they could be charged again," he added.

Dean's assessment was also shared by other legal experts after the Fischer v. United States decision was announced. In a post to New York University's Just Security publication, NYU law professor (and Just Security editor-in-chief) Ryan Goodman, Georgetown University law professor Mary McCord and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann, the three authors wrote that the Fischer decision is narrow in scope and likely won't be applied to other January 6 cases, like Trump's.

"[E]ven if the result of the Court’s ruling is to invalidate... charges against those who attacked the Capitol... the government has many tools in its tool kit to hold accountable those individuals criminally responsible, and the decision will have minimal impact on its cases against the great majority of those already convicted or charged," they wrote. "[T]he decision means little in terms of the pending charges against former President Donald Trump. It means potentially more to a subset of the January 6th defendants who were charged under this statute, who comprise only a fraction – 24% – of the existing January 6th defendants."

Dean told CNN on Friday that in his indictment, Smith likely accounted for SCOTUS ruling in the plaintiff's favor in Fischer, and that his indictment was designed to be bulletproof despite the Court siding with a defendant in that particular instance.

"There's a lot of anticipation this could come down, this has been out there during the prosecution of many of the January 6 cases. Jack Smith was certainly aware of it when he filed his indictment, and I think his indictment is going to withstand any test," he said. "So we'll see, but I think that's where the consensus is going to fall."

Watch Dean's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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