Laurence Tribe on Lawrence,

U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ruled last week that an effort to interrupt the counting of the electoral votes can be a crime — even if no violence was contemplated.

Friedrich’s ruling came in the case against Ronald Sandlin and Nathaniel DeGrave, two men accused of storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In doing so, she refused to throw out charges that they had “corruptly” obstructed an official proceeding before Congress by “entering and remaining in the United States Capitol without authority and committing an act of civil disorder, and engaging in disorderly and disruptive conduct.”

The judge made a critical finding that the counting of the electoral votes in the House is an “official proceeding.” Her logic is airtight: “There is a presiding officer, a process by which objections can be heard, debated, and ruled upon, and a decision — the certification of the results — that must be reached before the session can be adjourned. Indeed, the certificates of electoral results are akin to records or documents that are produced during judicial proceedings, and any objections to these certificates can be analogized to evidentiary objections.”.....

Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal has been voicing this exact argument for some time. “Judge Friedrich’s decision means the prosecutors don’t have to show someone intended violence for it to be a crime,” he explains. “So long as the intent was to influence and disrupt the congressional function of counting the votes, that is sufficient — so long as it was done ‘corruptly.’ ” Katyal notes that the judge cited “a prior ruling by a conservative superstar jurist, Judge Laurence Silberman, [who] defined ‘corruptly’ to be doing something by unlawful means.”

Katyal argues: “So as long as the intent was to disrupt the count, it would suffice to be criminal, which of course makes a lot of sense given the grave stakes here.” What is true of these two defendants, he adds, “goes for others, including anyone in the White House who aided the disruption.” He concludes that “Judge Friedrich’s decision, at bottom, is a how-to manual, demonstrating how government officials, including President Trump, can be criminally indicted."