WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A January 6 defendant is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review the legitimacy of federal prosecutors’ interpretation of one of the key statutes being used to prosecute those accused of “insurrection” at the U.S. Capital after the 2020 presidential election in a case that if heard could have drastic repercussions.

The infamous riot broke out after former President Donald Trump’s “March to Save America” rally, which was meant to demand that Congress delay certification of the 2020 presidential election results over allegations of vote fraud in several states.

Viral videos showed people engaging in physical altercations with police, pushing against security barricades, breaking through windows, trespassing in congressional offices, and climbing on walls, causing the vote certification to be suspended and lawmakers to be evacuated from the chambers. Other videos, however, also showed that many were let into the Capitol by police and simply walked the halls after the initial breach. Several people died, some of those dying after the rioting and claimed to be related to it, but the only one to die of direct, intentional violence was unarmed Trump supporter Ashlii Babbitt, shot without any warning by a Capitol police officer while she was climbing through an interior window.

Trump’s political opponents blamed him for “inciting” the riot, leading to an unsuccessful impeachment attempt. Yet despite the FBI failing to find evidence that the violence was planned or organized, more than a dozen Democrat committee investigations into the event have continued ever since, with hundreds of people arrested and many conservatives expressing concerns about their treatment and disproportionate, politically motivated punishment.

Among those defendants is Edward Jacob Lang, who has been charged with assault and other crimes for allegedly striking police officers’ riot shields with a baseball bat, and who maintains he has been held in “deplorable and subhuman conditions” for pretrial detention, including solitary confinement and being restricted from speaking to the press.

Now, the New York Sun reported that Lang has filed a petition urging the nation’s highest court to weigh in on the legitimacy of charging him with obstruction, an offense carrying a 20-year prison sentence and meant for anyone who (among other things) “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”

“Obstruction” factors prominently into federal prosecutors’ January 6 response, but Lang argues that prosecutors are misapplying and abusing a “statute intended to combat financial fraud,” instead transforming it “into a blatant political instrument to crush dissent.”

The “use of a statute intended to combat alteration of records, intimidation of witnesses and conduct aimed at disrupting investigative and adjudicatory proceedings is an example of prosecutorial overcharging,” he argues, and “was never intended to result in a hangman’s noose of general application.”

Unless stopped, the Biden Justice Department’s interpretation of obstruction “will serve to chill political speech and expression on the eve of one of the most consequential events in American life — the election of the next President of the United States,” the petition argues, meaning it “falls to this Court to rein in the Department of Justice. The deterrent effect of criminal prosecutions must not give way to vindictiveness.”

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols agreed with Lang and dismissed the obstruction count, ruling that the statute “requires that the defendant have taken some action with respect to a document, record, or other object in order to corruptly obstruct, impede or influence an official proceeding.”

However, a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel later reversed Nichols 2-1, ruling that a “broad interpretation of the statute — encompassing all forms of obstructive acts — is unambiguous and natural.”

Trump, who is running to become president again in 2024, says that he would “most likely” pardon a “large portion of” the January 6 defendants. His top rival for the GOP nomination, Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, says that he would “look at all these cases, who are people who are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we will be aggressive at issuing pardons.”