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Abouammo v. United States
Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-5146_e29f.pdf
Case background
While employed by Twitter at its San Francisco office, petitioner Ahmad
Abouammo provided confidential information to a high-level Saudi official about
Saudi dissidents posting on the company’s platform; in exchange, the official
wired Abouammo $300,000. Around the same time, Abouammo left Twitter and
relocated to Seattle, where he started a social-media consulting business. Two
San Francisco-based FBI agents who were investigating unauthorized disclosures
of Twitter account information flew to Seattle to interview Abouammo at his
home. During the interview, Abouammo denied giving the Saudi official
confidential information and claimed the payments were for consulting work;
when the agents asked for supporting documentation, he went upstairs, created
a fake invoice, and emailed it to one of the agents. Back in San Francisco, the
agents discovered from the document’s date-and-time metadata what Abouammo had
done. He was indicted in the Northern District of California for falsifying a
record under § 1519 and moved to dismiss the charge for improper venue, arguing
he could be tried only where the alleged falsification occurred. The District
Court denied the motion, finding venue also proper where the FBI investigation
was located, and a jury convicted Abouammo. The Ninth Circuit affirmed,
reasoning that § 1519’s intent requirement made the “contemplated effects” of
the falsification part of the “essential conduct” of the offense, permitting
trial where the investigation the defendant intended to stymie was ongoing or
contemplated.
Questions Presented
Holding
A defendant charged with violating § 1519 must be tried in the district where
the falsification occurred; he cannot be tried in a different district where the
investigation was located, because no “conduct constituting the offense”
happened there. The Constitution twice safeguards a defendant’s venue right, and
courts locate a crime by identifying the conduct that constitutes the offense
and where it took place. Section 1519 prohibits only one act — falsifying a
record or document with the intent to impede or obstruct a federal investigation
— and once a person commits that act with the requisite intent, he need do
nothing more to violate the law. The statute’s special-intent provision does not
change the analysis: a falsification made with intent to obstruct occurs in the
same place as one made without it, and § 1519, unlike laws barring actual
obstruction, does not require that the falsification have any impact on an
investigation. Section 1519 is therefore a standalone crime, not an inchoate
offense tethered to some other obstruction crime, so venue must rest on the
conduct § 1519 itself proscribes. Here, that was Seattle — in venue terms, the
Western District of Washington. 122 F. 4th 1072, reversed and remanded.
The Court
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
What this episode contains
This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in
Abouammo v. United States, written by Justice Kagan.
AI disclosure: The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine
learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone,
inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be
attributed to Justice Kagan. The text being read is the Court’s published
majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.
View all episodes
By So OrderedOpinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-5146_e29f.pdf
Case background
While employed by Twitter at its San Francisco office, petitioner Ahmad
Abouammo provided confidential information to a high-level Saudi official about
Saudi dissidents posting on the company’s platform; in exchange, the official
wired Abouammo $300,000. Around the same time, Abouammo left Twitter and
relocated to Seattle, where he started a social-media consulting business. Two
San Francisco-based FBI agents who were investigating unauthorized disclosures
of Twitter account information flew to Seattle to interview Abouammo at his
home. During the interview, Abouammo denied giving the Saudi official
confidential information and claimed the payments were for consulting work;
when the agents asked for supporting documentation, he went upstairs, created
a fake invoice, and emailed it to one of the agents. Back in San Francisco, the
agents discovered from the document’s date-and-time metadata what Abouammo had
done. He was indicted in the Northern District of California for falsifying a
record under § 1519 and moved to dismiss the charge for improper venue, arguing
he could be tried only where the alleged falsification occurred. The District
Court denied the motion, finding venue also proper where the FBI investigation
was located, and a jury convicted Abouammo. The Ninth Circuit affirmed,
reasoning that § 1519’s intent requirement made the “contemplated effects” of
the falsification part of the “essential conduct” of the offense, permitting
trial where the investigation the defendant intended to stymie was ongoing or
contemplated.
Questions Presented
Holding
A defendant charged with violating § 1519 must be tried in the district where
the falsification occurred; he cannot be tried in a different district where the
investigation was located, because no “conduct constituting the offense”
happened there. The Constitution twice safeguards a defendant’s venue right, and
courts locate a crime by identifying the conduct that constitutes the offense
and where it took place. Section 1519 prohibits only one act — falsifying a
record or document with the intent to impede or obstruct a federal investigation
— and once a person commits that act with the requisite intent, he need do
nothing more to violate the law. The statute’s special-intent provision does not
change the analysis: a falsification made with intent to obstruct occurs in the
same place as one made without it, and § 1519, unlike laws barring actual
obstruction, does not require that the falsification have any impact on an
investigation. Section 1519 is therefore a standalone crime, not an inchoate
offense tethered to some other obstruction crime, so venue must rest on the
conduct § 1519 itself proscribes. Here, that was Seattle — in venue terms, the
Western District of Washington. 122 F. 4th 1072, reversed and remanded.
The Court
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
What this episode contains
This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in
Abouammo v. United States, written by Justice Kagan.
AI disclosure: The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine
learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone,
inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be
attributed to Justice Kagan. The text being read is the Court’s published
majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.