I'm John Bachelors with Professor Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institution.

He teaches law at NYU and the University of Chicago and he's doing me in the favor of

commenting on events of these last days that speak to the presidential contest January 6th of the Supreme Court's

responsibility for those who have been detained for their January 6th conduct on a charge that may or may not apply.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday, this is a Scott's blog,

was divided over whether charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. capital during the January 6th attacks

should stand. Joseph Fisher argued that the law he was charged with violating,

which bars obstruction but an official proceeding, was only

intended to apply to evidence tampering involving a congressional inquiry

or investigation, but it was not clear whether a majority of the justices agreed with him.

I mentioned this because two of the charges by Special Counsel Smith against

former President Trump involved this very same charge of obstruction of an official

kind of official business.

Richard, what is your measure of how the court heard this?

Well I think that the conservative majority at the very

least is deeply skeptical of the argument and that even the liberal judges

understand that when you start dealing with criminal statutes you don't want to read them much too broadly.

And so I'll just make two points.

The words that you put on obstruction

with the second part of the statute.

And the first part of the statute

was unambiguously concerned with the kinds of financial

...