“A violent mob stormed the United States Capitol and disrupted the peaceful transition of power,” she said. “In plain English, the fundamental wrong committed by many of the rioters, including [Fischer], was a deliberate attempt to stop the joint session of Congress from certifying the results of the election. That is, they obstructed Congress’s work in that official proceeding.”

But she had barely finished her opening before the chief justice said he saw it differently.

Roberts said the justices have often said that the words of the law are read based on the full text. “The general phrase is controlled and defined by reference to the terms that precede it,” he told her.

That means the law is about concealing documents and records. “You can’t look at it as if it’s standing alone” as a general provision applying to disruptions of official proceedings, he said.

The court’s conservatives have often taken a skeptical view of prosecutions that rely on a broad reading of a criminal statute.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who was back on the bench after a one-day absence, pressed Prelogar on whether the government had used the law against other “violent protests.”

“There have been many violent protests that interfered with proceedings,” he said. “Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past?”

Prelogar said she did have a ready example of “enforcing it in a situation where people have violently stormed a building in order to prevent an official proceeding. That’s because I’m not aware of that circumstance ever happening prior to Jan. 6,” she said.

The justices are likely to hand down a ruling in the case in late June.

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