Some Jan. 6 rioters win early release, even before key Supreme Court ruling

By Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington PostKevin Seefried, a Delaware man who stormed the Capitol with Confederate battle flag, departs Federal Court after sentencing, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Washington. Seefried, who threatened a Black police officer with a pole attached to a Confederate battle flag as he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to three years in prison.

In December, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a consolidated challenge by three men whose lawyers argue that the law - passed by Congress after the Enron scandal to criminalize document shredding by the collapsed company’s accounting firm - is limited to destroying evidence in governmental investigations. Fourteen of 15 trial judges upheld prosecutors’ use of the law to charge rioters who obstructed Congress’s election certification vote, but one judge in the U.S.

A Supreme Court ruling against the obstruction charge could also impact the election interference case that special counsel Jack Smith has brought against Trump. Two of the four counts the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee faces are conspiring to and actually obstructing the certification of the election, underscoring the stakes of the high-court review.

Unlike most Jan. 6 defendants, Trump’s obstruction charges are based on allegations that he propagated a flood of lies claiming the election was stolen; attempted to use false claims of massive fraud to pressure state officials, the Justice Department and Pence to change the results; and schemed with others to submit to Congress slates of phony electors from swing states and to get lawmakers to toss out lawful ballots, culminating in the violent assault at the Capitol.

Seefried, 54 a drywall installer from Delaware, was memorialized carrying a Confederate flag in one of the most indelible photographs taken on Jan. 6 - parading with a symbol of the proslavery Civil War rebels through the halls of the U.S. Capitol. He was not accused of violence and was convicted in June 2022. His other convictions were for misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct at the Capitol, which carry only statutory maximum sentences of up to six months or a year.

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