The Supreme Court's chief justice, John Roberts, took over writing the opinion in a major January 6th case as leftists attempted to tie one of his conservative colleagues to the Capitol riot.
The new details were leaked to the New York Times, which speculated that Roberts' move was prompted by the paper's own reporting on flags that were flown at Samuel Alito's house.
The court ruled 6-3 in the case, Fischer v. United States, that the DOJ had stretched the law to prosecute certain January 6th participants charged with "obstruction of an official proceeding." The obstruction statute was also used by prosecutor Jack Smith in his January 6th case against Trump.
The top court held that charges of "obstruction of an official proceeding" must be tied to the destruction of physical documents or evidence. In a surprise, Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with the conservative majority, and conservative Amy Coney Barrett joined the dissent.
The Times article, written in the style of an expose, paints Roberts as having strong-armed the court to hand Trump victories in a trio of election year disputes.
Roberts sent out a confidential memo early on in the court's deliberations over presidential immunity, in which he expressed strong disapproval of a lower court's cavalier approach to the historic case. He also pushed for a unanimous ruling in the case dealing with leftist efforts to keep Trump off the ballot.
In Fischer, Roberts took over writing the majority opinion after he initially gave the role to Alito. At the time, Alito was the target of a media firestorm over the Times' reporting on an inverted flag that his wife flew at their home.
The Times called the timing of Robert's decision "suggestive" but conceded "it is unclear whether the two are linked."
Inverted flags have a long history as an American protest symbol, although more recently, they have been used by Trump supporters to protest the 2020 election results.
Alito refused to step aside from January 6th cases, saying his wife's political expression had no bearing on his work as a justice.
“My wife is a private citizen, and she possesses the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” he added.
In light of Fischer, the DOJ has dropped about half of its obstruction cases.
