Hello, this is Jeff Barnum reading the Supreme Court syllabus in Abu Amo versus United States. Search for right to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Argued March 30, 2026, decided June 11th, 2026. This case presents the question whether a defendant charged with violating 18 United States Code Section 1519, which makes it a crime to knowingly falsify a document with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred, or whether he may alternatively be tried in the district where the federal investigation was located. While employed by Twitter at its San Francisco office, petitioner Ahmed Abu Amo provided confidential information to a high-level Saudi official about Saudi dissidents posting on the company's platform. In exchange, the official wired Abu Amo $300,000. Around the same time, Abu Amo left Twitter and relocated to Seattle, where he started a social media consulting business. Two San Francisco-based FBI agents who were investigated unauthorized disclosures of Twitter account information later flew to Seattle to interview Abu Amo at his home. During the interview, Abu Amo denied giving the Saudi official confidential information, claiming that the payments were for consulting work. When the agents asked for supporting documentation, Abu Amo went upstairs, created a fake invoice, and emailed it to one of the agents. Back in San Francisco, the agents discovered from the emailed document state and time metadata what Abu Amo had just done. Abu Amo was indicted in the Northern District of California for falsifying a record under Section 1519. He moved to dismiss the charge for improper venue, arguing that he could be tried only where the alleged falsification occurred. The district court denied the motion, finding venue also proper in the place where the FBI investigation was located, and a jury convicted of Guamo. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, reasoning that Section 1519's intent requirement, with the intent to obstruct investigation, made the contemplated effects of the falsification part of the essential conduct of the offense, thereby permitting trial where the investigation the defendant intended to stymie was ongoing or contemplated. Held. A defendant charged with Section 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. Article 3 instructs that the trial of all crimes shall be held in the state where the crimes shall have been committed. That's Section 2, Clause 3. And the Sixth Amendment entitles criminal defendants to a jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. To implement that constitutional rule, courts generally determine the location of the offense's essential conduct elements by identifying the conduct constituting the offense, the things a defendant must do to violate the statute, and then ascertaining the place where those criminal acts occurred. Under this framework, the venue for trying a Section 1519 offense must be where the document's falsification happened, which here was in Seattle. Section 1519 imposes criminal liability on a person who knowingly falsifies a record or document with the intent to impede or obstruct a federal investigation. The only prohibitive act is the falsification of a document. Once a person has committed that act with the requisite intent, he need do nothing more to violate the law. Because the only prescribed conduct is falsification, venue must be where falsification occurred. Contrary to the Ninth Circuit's view, Section 1519's special intent provision does not lead to a different result. This court has never looked to a statute's mensrea elements in considering venue, nor would it make much sense to do so. A falsification with the intent to obstruct an investigation occurs at the same place as a falsification without that intent, which is to say, at the place of falsification. The mensrea requirement thus adds nothing to the conduct-focused analysis. The Ninth Circuit treated the contemplated effects of the falsification as part of 1519's essential conduct elements, but that is not so. The statute's concern with effects is instead confined to the defendant's mensrea. Section 1519, unlike laws barring actual obstruction, does not require that falsifying a document have any impact on an investigation. Whatever obstructive effects Abu Abo's false invoice may have had in Northern California, they were not elements of his crime and cannot figure in determining where his crime was committed. The government, for its part, declares Section 1519 an inchoed offense, with some integral relationship to another, though unspecified, obstruction of justice crime. But Section 1519 is an independent crime, not an incoed offense. In COED offenses are necessarily a step toward the commission of another crime. But a person can commit a Section 1519 crime without taking any steps toward another crime, for example, by falsifying a document with the requisite intent and then putting the document away in a drawer without ever using it to obstruct an investigation. Rather than define an in-co-ed offense tethered to a crime of actual instruction, Section 1519 spells out a standalone crime for falsifying documents. Accordingly, venue for it must be based on the conduct that Section 1519 itself prescribes, not on the conduct some other law does. The trial for falsifying a document must take place where the defendant falsified the document. Here, that was in Seattle, in venue terms, the Western District of Washington. The trial should not have occurred in the Northern District of California because no conduct constituting the offense happened in that location. Reversed and remanded, Justice Kagan delivered the opinion for a unanimous court. Thank you for listening. Please help us by rating and reviewing this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And make sure you subscribe so you can get all of the OT 25 decisions automatically delivered to your device in this very busy month of June. If you wish to communicate with the podcast, please email us at scodisdecisions at gmail.com or click the link in the show notes. Thanks and have a great day.