The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to decide a question at the heart of the federal election-interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and hundreds of prosecutions arising from the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: Can the government charge defendants in those cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official congressional proceeding?
The decision to hear the case will complicate and perhaps delay the start of Mr. Trump’s trial, now scheduled to take place in Washington in March. The Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, which may not arrive until June, will likely address the viability of two of the main counts against Mr. Trump and could severely limit efforts by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to hold the former president accountable for the violence that his supporters committed at the Capitol.
The court’s eventual decision could also invalidate convictions that have already been secured against scores of Mr. Trump’s followers who took part in the assault. That would be a devastating blow to the government’s prosecutions of the Jan. 6 cases.
The case the court agreed to hear involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted on seven charges for his role in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors say he assaulted the police as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election. Like hundreds of other rioters whose actions disrupted the certification proceeding in the Capitol, Mr. Fischer was charged with the obstruction count, formally known as 18 U.S.C. 1512.
Mr. Fischer sought dismissal of a part of the indictment brought under the federal law, which was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002a statute aimed primarily at white-collar crime.
Judge Carl J. Nichols of the Federal District Court in Washington granted Mr. Fischer’s motion, saying that the law required defendants to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” — a provision that he failed to find in Mr. Fischer’s conduct at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Judge Nichols’s decision, ruling that the law “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.” Three Jan. 6 defendants, including Mr. Fischer, ultimately asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the law had been justly applied to the Capitol attack.
The obstruction charge was never an easy fit in the cases stemming from the storming of the Capitol. When it was passed in the early 2000s, the law was aimed at curbing corporate malfeasance by outlawing things like destroying documents or tampering with evidence.
Defense lawyers representing Jan. 6 rioters argued that federal prosecutors improperly stretched its scope to cover the violence that erupted at the Capitol and interfered with a proceeding in which lawmakers had gathered to certify the results of the 2020 election.
The lawyers also took issue with using the charge against people who stormed the Capitol, saying that many were not acting “corruptly” as the law requires because they believed they were protesting a stolen election.
“The statute has been used to over-criminalize the Jan. 6 cases,” said Norm Pattis, a lawyer for Jake Lang, who also appealed his obstruction conviction to the Supreme Court. “Congress never intended that.”
Mr. Pattis said the Supreme Court’s review was “significant” in hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the riot at the Capitol and was also “yet another reason the 2024 cases against Donald Trump should be delayed.”
Two of the four counts in the federal election interference indictment Mr. Trump is facing are based on the obstruction charge. Mr. Trump has been charged with personally obstructing the certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He is also facing a separate count of conspiring with others to obstruct the proceeding.
If the Supreme Court finds that the law does not apply to the mob attack against the Capitol, it could cripple plans by Mr. Smith to pin the violence that took place on Jan. 6 on Mr. Trump.
Recent court papers in the election case have strongly suggested that prosecutors were planning to use the obstruction charge as a way to show the jury graphic videos of the Capitol attack and perhaps even introduce testimony from rioters claiming that they stormed the building on Mr. Trump’s instructions.