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Excerpt from Teri Kanefield's excellent post from her blog. 
*"These obscure court victories have important implications for federal prosecutions moving forward. In his Jan. 5 speech on the attack on the Capitol, Merrick Garland explained how complex investigations work: “We resolve more straightforward cases first because they provide the evidentiary foundation for more complex cases,” he said. “Investigating the more overt crimes generates linkages to less overt ones. Overt actors and the evidence they provide can lead us to others who may also have been involved. And that evidence can serve as the foundation for further investigative leads and techniques.”
One of the many advantages for prosecutors in working their way up from the more overt crimes to the less overt ones is that they can resolve these kinds of challenges early in the process — so that as they move into more difficult cases, courts have already given the green light on using the law to obstruct an official proceeding in cases relating to the insurrection and the attempt to interfere with Congress’s counting of electoral votes.
That law offers clear advantages to prosecutors. Charging insurrectionists under 1512 (c) (2), for example, permits prosecutors to sidestep the question of whether planners of the rally intended violence. To be prosecuted under this statue, the defendant need only have intended to “obstruct, influence, or impede” the counting of the electoral votes.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recently confirmed that the Justice Department is investigating the fake electoral college certifications that declared President Donald Trump the winner of states he lost. Because courts have already rejected claims that U.S.C. 1512(c) (2) doesn’t apply to the certification of the vote, prosecutors need only determine whether creation of the fake elector certificates was intended to “obstruct, influence, or impede” the electoral vote count. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has been linked to the creation of the fake electors and the scheme, and the Jan. 6 committee is reportedly trying to explore whether the White House was coordinating the effort and whether any laws were broken."
* Teri Kanefield
