Politico:  “Could former President Donald Trump be charged with a crime for urging then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the electoral vote tally? That appeared to be the thrust of a question U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols posed on Monday at a court hearing for one of the hundreds of Americans charged in the Capitol riot.

“The judge and both sides in the case found themselves debating the scope of a law being wielded against many Jan. 6 defendants that makes it a felony to ‘corruptly’ interfere with an official federal government proceeding and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The statute is typically applied to court-related conduct, like threatening judges, jurors or witnesses. However, prosecutors have leveled the obstruction charge against about a third of the roughly 700 Jan. 6 defendants over their alleged efforts to disrupt the electoral vote tally that Congress was undertaking when a crowd loyal to Trump broke through police lines and forced their way into the Capitol.

“At a hearing on Monday for defendant Garret Miller of Richardson, Texas, Nichols made the first move toward a Trump analogy by asking a prosecutor whether the obstruction statute could have been violated by someone who simply “called Vice President Pence to seek to have him adjudge the certification in a particular way.” The judge also asked the prosecutor to assume the person trying to persuade Pence had the “appropriate mens rea,” or guilty mind, to be responsible for a crime. Nichols made no specific mention of Trump, who appointed him to the bench, but the then-president was publicly and privately pressuring Pence in the days before the fateful Jan. 6 tally to decline to certify Joe Biden’s victory. Trump also enlisted other allies, including attorney John Eastman, to lean on Pence.”