According to blabbermouth.net, attorneys for Iced Earth’s guitarist Jon Schaffer have allegedly asked for a delay in Schaffer’s sentencing in connection with his role in the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. This past August, a judge set a February 20, 2024 sentencing date for Schaffer, who had previously “acknowledged he is a founding lifetime member” of the right wing Oath Keepers extremist group.  But on January 26, the musician’s lawyers filed a “motion to continue sentencing or in the alternative stay sentencing,” pending the outcome of the case Joseph W. Fischer v. United States, which the Supreme Court agreed to hear this past  December.

According to Politico, the 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 January 6 defendant named Joseph Fischer. If the court sides with Fischer, it would also call into question the use of the law against other January 6 defendants, including Schaffer.

In the Supreme Court case, the only provision of the federal criminal code at issue is 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2),which criminalizes any effort to “corruptly” obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding. Conviction can result in a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

According to NBC News, the provision was enacted in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a bill passed in the aftermath of the Enron accounting scandal. As such, defendants say it was never intended to apply to an incident such as January 6.

In January 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta granted the U.S. government’s request to share sealed materials from the case involving Schaffer’s role in the U.S. Capitol riot case as discovery to the three main Oath Keepers cases.

In May 2023, Mehta handed down an 18- ear prison sentence for the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that ended with the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of his April 2021 plea deal, Shaffer entered into a cooperation agreement with the government.