Talk:Obstructing an official proceeding

A fact from Obstructing an official proceeding appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 5 February 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that many participants in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding, a crime that was created in response to the 2001 Enron accounting scandal?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/February. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Obstructing an official proceeding.

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 20:04, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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... that many participants in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding, a crime that was created in response to the 2001 Enron accounting scandal?
Source: [1] "At issue is a statute the Justice Department has employed against at least 235 defendants... Congress... pass[ed] Sarbanes-Oxley after a corporate fraud crisis wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder value, including the early-2000s collapse of Enron Corp. and accounting giant Arthur Andersen." Also [2] and [3]
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Jessen's icosahedron

Created by Antony-22 (talk). Self-nominated at 21:25, 15 January 2022 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article was created 15 Jan and is 4787 B in length. Hook is sourced inline and is interesting. Earwig returns a 40% similarity, but this is mainly from the "legal basis" section, so I don't have a problem there. My only advice would be to change the first sentence of the lead to read "...under United States (U.S.) federal law" so that the abbreviation can be used elsewhere throughout the article. I won't hold up the nomination just for that though, so this one is good to go. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:18, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@PCN02WPS: Thanks for the quick review. FYI, "U.S." does not need to be written out on first use per MOS:ABBR#Exceptions. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 21:34, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good to know, I hadn't seen that before! Thanks for clearing that up. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 03:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Antony-22 and PCN02WPS: hi there! I thought the cited statute (18 U.S.C. section 1512(c)(2)) looked familiar; I unearthed a closet of the Mueller Report from my closet, and there it was, in the "obstruction of justice" section. I'm not a lawyer, but what distinguishes this from just being an instance of obstruction of justice? In other words, I'm leaning towards a merge proposal at the moment... theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she) 12:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Theleekycauldron: Obstructing an official proceeding is broader than obstruction of justice, because it includes not just judicial proceedings but those of Congress, executive agencies, and regulators. In any case, this discussion should be on the talk page, not here. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 19:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Section 1519[edit]

It seems to me that this article perhaps should mention 18 U.S.C. § 1519. DOJ has said (in 2002) that “Section 1512, as amended, should be read in conjunction with the new Section 1519….” Section 1519 says (emphasis added):

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

That seems important for us to mention, because if DOJ was correct about this in 2002, then maybe 1512 should be read as follows:

Whoever corruptly (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) [in a way that] otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so….

Our lead paragraph says 1512 is about evidence tampering, after all. We need to be careful not to take a position in ongoing litigation. According to this reliable source, “U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ruled that ‘otherwise’ could only refer to other kinds of document-tampering, setting up the disagreement resolved by Friday's [circuit court] decision.” We should not take the position that Judge Nichols was wrong, or that the dissent by Judge Kansas was wrong. SCOTUS has agreed to decide that question. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I made some article edits accordingly. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:25, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]