he was the target of a federal investigation. 645 F.3d 85, 108 (2d Cir.2011). Persico is distinguishable from the case at bar, however. In Pérsico, there was no pending state criminal proceeding at the time the defendant engaged in witness tampering. Thus, there was no dispute that the particular proceeding contemplated by the defendant was the imminent federal grand jury proceeding. Here, Shavers and White were clearly contemplating their upcoming hearings in Pennsylvania state court, and not any federal proceeding, when they sought to tamper with potential witnesses. For that reason, we hold that no rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of a § 1512(b)(1) violation beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Shively, 927 F.2d 804, 811-12 (5th Cir. 1991) (<HOLDING>). As such, we will vacate Shavers’s convictions
holding that the government had not produced evidence that the defendant intended to influence an official proceeding because the evidence showed only that he intended to influence the state civil proceedings that he had brought against his insurance agency holding that equally consistent circumstances of influence cannot be considered as evidence of undue influence holding that allegations of influence by an unnamed person outside the jury required the holding of an evidentiary hearing to determine extrinsic influence holding that the trial court correctly instructed the jury that the defendant had to establish by evidence that outweighed the evidence against him that he lacked the capacity to form specific intent holding that government must merely show that defendant knew that it was a bank that he intended to influence