Federal Ruling Against Capitol Rioters Could Create Massive Legal Problems For Trump

Late last week, a panel of judges ruled that Capitol Rioters CAN be charged with obstructing a Congressional proceeding, reversing the ruling of a Trump-appointed lower court judge. On Monday, legal analyst Andrew Weissmann said that this ruling is a "gift" to special prosecutor Jack Smith, as he now essentially has permission by the courts to seek those same charges against Trump. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what that might look like.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A former assistant DA in Manhattan turned legal expert, Andrew Weissman, believes that a little noticed court ruling late last week could give special prosecutor Jack Smith everything he needs to lobby, uh, law, excuse me, even bigger charges against Donald Trump in that ongoing investigation. So here's what happened. Late last week, a three judge panel voted two to one to reverse a lower court's ruling that said that Capitol Rioters cannot be charged with obstructing an official government proceeding. Now, the judge who issued that first ruling, of course, was a Trump appointed judge. Carl Nichols said, no, you cannot charge these Capitol rioters with obstructing a government proceeding, even though their actions cause the delay obstruction of an official government proceeding. You can't do that. And then the three judge panel said, yeah, you can, like, why would you not be able to do that? Because they very clearly did that.

So Andrew Weisman says that this is a massive gift for Jack Smith. Here's what Weisman said. This is really a gift for Jack Smith because as good as it is for the Washington DC prosecutors who have hundreds of pending cases who want to know that this is a charge they can continue charging. Jack Smith is going to be thinking about this obstruction charge. With respect to the former president, there's nothing better for Jack Smith than to know that this is already been approved by the DC Circuit, meaning he can charge it. And unless the Supreme Court disagrees with the DC Circuit, he knows that this is a rock solid, legally, a legal rock solid charge that he has to prove it factually. But getting the sort of pre-clearance is unusual to have, and he has to be happy that the court ruled that this is a charge that will stick for any potential charge.

He is thinking with respect to the former president, yeah, the Supreme Court could overturn it, but more likely than not, the Supreme Court will probably look at this and say, we're not gonna touch it. Let the decision stand. So that is likely to be what happens here. Um, we can't guarantee that. Obviously the Supreme Court's a little nutty, so whatever happens, we'll have to wait and see. But assuming the Supreme Court does not overturn this, then Jack Smith can 100% just go ahead and toss those charges onto whatever else he wants to charge Trump with. Now, these would not be the only charges, and of course these would probably not be the most significant charges, but if you're looking at hitting Donald Trump with every possible charge you can find, it's always good to know that, Hey, guess what? Look, here's another one we can do. Let's go ahead and add it

To the list. Let's make it a thing. You wanna get 'em with obstruction of justice too? Let's put that on there. Every single charge that they can make bolsters their case. But there's another important piece of it that Weissman unfortunately did not hit on. If you can hit Trump with it, if you can hit the Capitol rioters with it, then that of course would also mean you could hit other people with it as well. Perhaps some of the organizers of the Stop the Steal rally, perhaps other people who may have encouraged the Capitol rioters. In other words, people that might know other things but don't want to testify unless of course you offer them some kind of plea deal. This is the kind of charge that you can dangle in front of people who refuse to speak, saying, listen, I get you don't want to talk, but maybe we can work out a deal.