A majority of justices appeared cautious at oral arguments in December of banning releases, which is common and has a long history, but at least one member of the court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, suggested the Sacklers shouldn’t get off so easily.
The case is Harrington v. Purdue Pharma LP et al., case number 23-124.
Jan. 6
Former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph W. Fischer wants the justices to rein in the federal government’s reading of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s obstruction of Congress provision, which was enacted in the wake of the 2001 Enron Corp. accounting scandal and has been levied against roughly 300 defendants accused of storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the 2020 presidential election results.
Fischer, one of the defendants charged with obstruction, claims the text and history of the provision, 18 U.S.C. Section 1512(c)(2), prove it was only meant to apply to obstructive acts taken toward documents or records that could be used in congressional investigations. But the federal government argues the provision was meant to be a catch-all that could be applied to any obstructive act, specifically those that Congress wasn’t aware of at the time the statute was written.
