Kimberly Wehle in Politico:
There’s been a lot of attention paid to the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for actions taken while president, a judgment that will have big implications for the 2024 presidential campaign and special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president on charges related to Jan. 6. But there’s a sleeping giant of a case also percolating in the Supreme Court that’s even more likely than the immunity issue to impact Smith’s prosecution of Trump.
The case is Joseph W. Fischer v. United States, which the court agreed to hear in December, and which doesn’t explicitly mention Trump. At issue is whether prosecutors and the Department of Justice have been improperly using a 2002 law originally aimed at curbing financial crimes to prosecute a Jan. 6 defendant named Joseph Fischer. Should the court side with Fischer, it would also call into question the use of the law against other Jan. 6 defendants — including Trump.