The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear appeals from defendants charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The justices are scheduled to consider three different appeals at their regular private meeting Friday of defendants charged with obstructing an official proceeding, which is one of the charges on which Donald Trump has been indicted in his federal election interference case, reported NBC News.
If the court takes up appeals for defendants Joseph Fischer, Edward Lang and Garret Miller, that would pause their cases for months while justices hear arguments and issue a ruling by next June. But if at least four justices vote against the appeal, a lower court ruling that allowed the government to prosecute on those charges would remain in place.
If appeals go ahead, Trump's lawyers would likely ask to delay his trial until the Supreme Court ruled, NBC reported.
But his trial would still likely happen before the 2024 election if the ruling comes before the end of next June.
The defendants argued in lower courts that the law had been applied too broadly and questioned the application of the word "corruptly" in their cases. While U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols initially dismissed the charges, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 in favor of the government.
Trump's lawyers have also sought to have that charge dismissed, similarly arguing that the indictment stretched the meaning of the statute.
"The indictment takes a statute directed at the destruction of records in accounting fraud and applies it to disputing the outcome of a presidential election," his lawyers wrote. "This stretches the statutory language beyond any plausible mooring to its text.”
