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Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared for more than seven hours before the grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn 2020 election, according to sources with knowledge of his testimony.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday night moved former Vice President Mike Pence closer to appearing before a grand jury investigating efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, rejecting a bid by lawyers for former President Donald Trump to block the testimony.
It was not immediately clear what day Pence might appear before the grand jury, which for months has been investigating the events preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and efforts by Trump and his allies to subvert the election outcome. But Pence’s testimony, coming as he inches toward a likely entrance in the 2024 presidential race, would be a milestone moment in the investigation and would likely give prosecutors a key first-person account as they press forward with their inquiry.
The order from the three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was sealed and none of the parties are mentioned by name in online court records. But the appeal in the sealed case was filed just days after a lower-court judge had directed Pence to testify over objections from the Trump team.
A lawyer for Pence and a spokesman for Trump did not immediately return emails seeking comment, and a spokesman for the Justice Department special counsel leading the investigation declined to comment.
The appeal was decided by Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, and judges Patricia Millett and Gregory Wilkins, both appointees of former President Barack Obama. It was not clear if lawyers for Trump might ask the entire appeals court to hear the matter.
Pence was subpoenaed to testify earlier this year, but lawyers for Trump objected, citing executive privilege concerns. A judge in March refused to block Trump’s appearance, though he did side with the former vice president’s constitutional claims that he could not be forced to answer questions about anything related to his role as presiding over the Senate’s certification of votes on Jan. 6.
A spokesman for Pence subsequently said that the former vice president would not appeal and that his arguments about the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which is intended to protect members of Congress from being questioned about official legislative acts, had been vindicated.
“We’ll obey the law, we’ll tell the truth,” Pence said in an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday. “And the story that I’ve been telling the American people all across the country, the story that I wrote in the pages of my memoir, that’ll be the story I tell in that setting.”
Pence has spoken extensively about Trump’s pressure campaign urging him to reject Biden’s victory in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including in his book “So Help Me God.” Pence, as vice president, had a ceremonial role overseeing Congress’ counting of the Electoral College vote, but did not have the power to affect the results, despite Trump’s contention otherwise.
Pence has said that Trump endangered his family and everyone else who was at the Capitol that day and history will hold him “accountable.”
“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence wrote, summing up their time in the White House.
The special counsel leading the investigation, Jack Smith, has cast a broad net in interviews and has sought the testimony of a long list of former Trump aides, including ex-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former adviser Stephen Miller.
Smith is separately investigating Trump over the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, as well as possible efforts to obstruct that probe. On Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers in that investigation called the Justice Department investigation “severely botched” and “politically infected” and urged the House Intelligence Committee to step in by holding hearings and introducing legislation to correct classified document handling procedures in the White House and standardize procedures for presidents and vice presidents for when they leave office.
“DOJ should be ordered to stand down, and the intelligence community should instead conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this Committee, as well as your counterparts in the Senate,” the lawyers wrote.
It is not clear when either of the special counsel’s investigations will end or who, if anyone, will be charged.
Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
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Former Vice President Mike Pence will make an announcement on whether he will be launching a 2024 presidential bid “well before late June.”
In an interview for “Face the Nation,” Pence told CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa that anyone “serious” about seeking the Republican nomination would need to enter the contest by June.
When asked whether he is leaning towards running, Pence answered, “Well, I’m here in Iowa.”
If he were to run, Pence would be joining a field that currently includes his former boss, former President Donald Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — who also served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration — former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, in jockeying for the Republican presidential nomination.
Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid last year, setting the former running mates up for potential clashes on the campaign trail. Since leaving office, Pence’s rift with Trump has widened; Pence told Costa that he and Trump had a very close working relationship for four years that “didn’t end well.”
Pence said that although he once believed Trump was the “fighter” Republican voters needed in the White House, he now thinks “the American people will want to see us move forward.”
At the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C., in March, Pence said that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable” for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Pence earlier this month decided not to appeal a ruling requiring him to testify before a grand jury as part of a special counsel investigation into Jan. 6.
Pence also said he and his lawyers have been “transparent” and “fully cooperated” with the Justice Department and members of Congress over classified documents found at his home in January.
Pence told Costa that he has more and more people telling him there is room for his brand of “traditional conservatism,” in the crowded field of presidential contenders.
“The challenges that we’re facing in this economy, with inflation at a 40-year high, and a crisis at our border, are going to require someone who has the ability to step in on day one, and set our country back on a path towards security and prosperity,” Pence said.
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“How many different ways are you gonna ask the same fucking question, Mark?” Chris Christie asked me. We were seated in the dining room of the Hay-Adams hotel. It’s a nice hotel, five stars. Genteel.
Christie’s sudden ire was a bit jolting, as I had asked him only a few fairly innocuous questions so far, most of them relating to Donald Trump, the man he might run against in the presidential race. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, was visiting Washington as part of his recent tour of public deliberations about whether to launch another campaign.
Color me dubious. It’s unclear what makes Christie think the Republican Party might magically revert to some pre-Trump incarnation. Or, for that matter, what makes him think a campaign would go any better than his did seven years ago, the last time Christie ran, when he won exactly zero delegates and dropped out of the Republican primary after finishing sixth in New Hampshire.
But still, color me vaguely intrigued too—more so than I am about, say, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. If Christie runs again in 2024, he could at least serve a compelling purpose: The gladiatorial Garden Stater would be better at poking the orange bear than would potential rivals Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, who so far have offered only the most flaccid of critiques. Over the past few months, Christie has been among the more vocal and willing critics of Trump. Notably, he became the first Republican would-be 2024 candidate to say he would not vote for the former president again in a general election.
Christie makes for an imperfect kamikaze candidate, to say the least. But he does seem genuine in his desire to retire his doormat act and finally take on his former patron and intermittent friend. Which was why I found myself having breakfast with Christie earlier this week, eager to hear whether he was really going to challenge Trump and how hard he was willing to fight. Strangely, he seemed more eager to fight with me.
It was a weird breakfast. Shortly after 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Christie strolled through the ornate dining room of the Hay-Adams, where he had spent the previous few nights. He was joined by his longtime aide Maria Comella. We sat near a window, with a view of the White House across Lafayette Square, and about 100 feet from the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Trump had staged his ignominious Bible photo op three springs ago.
I started off by asking Christie about his statement that he would not vote for Trump, even if the former president were the Republican nominee. “I think Trump has disqualified himself from the presidency,” Christie said.
So what would Christie do, then—vote for Joe Biden? Nope. “The guy is physically and mentally not up to the job,” Christie said.
Just to be clear, I continued, this hellscape he was currently suffering under in Biden’s America would be as bad as whatever a next-stage Trump presidency would look like?
“Elections are about choices,” Christie said, as he often does. So whom would he choose in November 2024, if he’s faced with a less-than-ideal choice? “I probably just wouldn’t vote,” he said.
Interesting choice! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a politician admit to planning not to vote, but it’s at least preferable to that cutesy “I’m writing in Ronald Reagan” or “I’m writing in my pal Ned” evasion that some do.
I pressed on, curious to see how committed Christie really was to his recent swivel away from Trump, or whether this was just his latest opportunistic interlude before his inevitable belly flop back into the Mar-a-Lago lagoon. Say Trump secures the nomination, and most of his formal “rivals”—and various other “prominent Republicans”—revert to doormat mode. (“I will support the nominee,” “Biden is senile,” etc.) What’s Christie going to be saying then, vis-à-vis Trump?
We were exactly seven minutes into our discussion, and my mild dubiousness seemed to set Christie off. His irritation felt a tad performative, as if he might be playing up his Jersey-tough-guy bit.
“I’m not going to dwell on this, Mark,” Christie said. “You guys drive me crazy. All you want to do is talk about Trump. I’m sorry, I don’t think he’s the only topic to talk about in politics. And I’m not going to waste my hour with you this morning—which is a joy and a gift—on just continuing talking, asking, and answering the Donald Trump question from 18 different angles.”
I pivoted to DeSantis, mostly in an attempt to un-trigger Christie. Christie has made a persuasive case that DeSantis has been a disaster as an almost-candidate so far, especially with regard to his feud with Disney. But would Christie support DeSantis if he were to somehow defeat Trump and become the nominee?
“I have to see how he performs as a candidate,” Christie said. “I really don’t know Ron DeSantis all that well … I’m going to be a discerning voter,” Christie added. “I’m going to watch what everybody does, and I’m gonna decide who I’m gonna vote for.” (Reminder: unless it’s Trump or Biden.)
I had a few more follow-ups. “So, I know you don’t want to talk about Trump …”
“Here we are, back to Trump again,” Christie said, shaking his head.
Trump, I mentioned, has been the definitional figure in the Republican Party for the past seven or eight years, and probably will remain so for the next few. Not only that, but Christie’s history with Trump—especially from 2016 to 2021—was pretty much the only thing that made him more relevant than, say, Hutchinson (respectfully!) or any other Republican polling at less than 1 percent.
This was when Christie lit into me for asking him “the same fucking question.” Look, I said, at least 40 or 50 percent of the GOP remains very much in thrall to Trump, if you believe poll numbers.
Christie questioned my premise: “No matter what statistics you cite, what polls you cite, that’s a snapshot in the moment, and I don’t think those are static numbers.”
“It’s been true for about seven years,” I replied. “That’s pretty static.”
“But he’s been as high as 85 to 90 percent,” Christie said, referring to Trump’s Republican-approval ratings in the past. There will always be variance, he argued, but those approval ratings would be much smaller now. Christie then accused me of being “obsessed” with Trump.
At this point, Christie was raising his voice rather noticeably again, an agitated wail that brought to mind Wilma Flintstone’s vacuum. I was becoming self-conscious about potentially disturbing other diners in this elegant salle à manger.
A waiter came over again and asked if we wanted any food. Christie, who was sipping a cup of hot tea, demurred, and I ordered a Diet Coke and a bowl of mixed berries. “What a fascinating combination,” Christie marveled.
I told Christie that I hoped he would in fact run, if only because he would be better equipped to be pugilistic than the other milksops in the field. Obviously, it would have been better if Christie had taken his best shots at the big-bully front-runner seven years ago instead of largely standing down, quitting the race, and then leading the GOP’s collective bum-rush to Trump. But he has grown a lot and learned a lot since then, Christie assured me.
“I certainly won’t do the same thing in 2024 that I did in 2016,” Christie said. “You can bank on that.”
“Well, I would hope not,” I said. This seemed to reignite his pique.
“What do you mean, I hope?” Christie snapped. He took umbrage that I would question the sincerity of his opposition to Trump: “How about just paying attention to everything I’ve said over the last eight weeks?”
I told him that I had paid attention to what he said about Trump over the past eight years. Christie nodded and seemed to acknowledge that maybe I had a point, that some skepticism might be warranted.
I asked Christie if he had any regrets about anything.
“I have regrets about every part of my life, Mark,” he said.
Whoa.
“And anybody who says they don’t is lying.”
That said, Christie added, he would not change anything about his past dealings and relationship with Trump. He is always reminding people that he and Trump were friends long before 2016; that they went way back, 22 years or so. Christie told me that he and Trump have not spoken in two years. Did he miss Trump?
“Not particularly,” he said.
Do you think he misses you?
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“I do,” Christie said.
“Has he called, or tried to reach out?”
“No, that wouldn’t be his style,” Christie told me. “That would be too ego-violative.” (I made a mental note that I’d never before heard the term ego-violative.)
“But I do think he misses me, yeah. I think he misses people who tell him what the truth is. I think he misses that.”
Christie had another meeting scheduled at nine at the Hay-Adams, this one with Representative John James, a freshman Republican from Michigan. From Washington, he would head to New Hampshire, where he had a full two-day schedule planned—a town hall, a few campaignlike stops, some meetings. He told me he would make a decision in the next few weeks whether to run.
Before I left the hotel, I asked Christie whether his wife, Mary Pat, thought he should run. “My wife affirmatively wants me to do it, which is different than 2015 and 2016,” Christie told me. “She thinks I’m the only person who can effectively take on Donald Trump.”
That’s kind of what I think, I told him—that he could at least play the role of a deft agitator. Good, Christie said, but Mary Pat’s vote counted for more than mine. “I sleep with her every night,” he explained. I told him I understood.
“Have fun in New Hampshire,” I said as Christie shook my hand and pirouetted out of the dining room. He seemed to be no longer mad, if he ever was.
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Two-time running mates former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, who may soon be opponents for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, are speaking at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Indianapolis on Friday.
The NRA convention is not just a gathering for gun enthusiasts; it also attracts Republican presidential hopefuls who want to showcase their support for Second Amendment rights. The NRA endorsed Trump during its 2016 annual convention.
Pence hasn’t yet announced whether he will seek the presidency, but he has been visiting early-voting primary states, while Trump, the first major candidate in the race, and his allies insist the voters are already lined up to support him. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who recently declared he’s running for president, is making an appearance at the convention. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not appearing in person at the convention, but the event will feature a video address from him.
Trump has bashed his former vice president ever since Pence affirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, and has even tried to shift the blame for the riot to Pence, saying last month, “in many ways, you can blame him,” meaning Pence, for what transpired that day.
Earlier this month, Pence decided not to appeal a ruling requiring him to testify before a grand jury as part of a special counsel investigation into the assault on the Capitol, but Trump’s legal team is still trying to keep Pence from testifying.
Last year, Trump mocked Republicans who decided not to attend the convention when it was held in Texas just days after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead. Trump said, “unlike some others, I didn’t disappoint you by not showing up today,” before reading the names of the children who died that day.
This year’s convention takes place after recent mass shootings at a private religious school in Nashville and a bank in Louisville, Kentucky.
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WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump’s actions leading up to and during his mob’s assault on the Capitol will get access to key evidence after his former vice president decided not to pursue an appeal to avoid testifying.
Mike Pence aide Devin O’Malley said that a judge’s ruling had agreed with him on the key issue that Pence had objected to regarding his role on Jan. 6 itself as presiding officer of the Senate. “Having vindicated that principle of the Constitution, Vice President Pence will not appeal the judge’s ruling and will comply with the subpoena as required by law,” O’Malley said.
Pence had originally said he would take his battle to quash the grand jury subpoena to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. But a week ago, he said that he was “pleased” that James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., had agreed with his argument that the “speech and debate clause” in the Constitution applied to him in his role as president of the Senate.
Prosecutors’ main interest in Pence’s testimony, though, is not in his dealings with members of Congress. Rather, it is in his interactions and conversations with Trump and his aides, who had been pushing him for weeks to use his role as presiding officer at the election certification ceremony on Jan. 6, 2021, to award Trump a second term, even though he had lost his re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden two months earlier.
Trump attempted to claim “executive privilege” to prevent Pence from revealing that information, but Boasberg rejected that argument in his still-sealed ruling.
It is unclear whether Trump will appeal Boasberg’s ruling to keep Pence from testifying. Trump’s staff did not immediately respond to a HuffPost query, but his lawyers a week ago filed a similar appeal in an attempt to prevent other senior White House aides, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, from having to answer questions before the grand jury. That appeal was denied Tuesday.
Norm Eisen, a former White House lawyer in the Obama administration who worked with House leaders on Trump’s first impeachment for extorting Ukraine, said Pence’s testimony would be “of the utmost importance” to special counsel Jack Smith.
“He is a critical firsthand witness to Trump’s statements as the attempted coup evolved,” Eisen said. “The most important testimony that Pence has to offer begins on Dec. 5, when Trump first raised the idea of challenging the Electoral College with him, and rolls through the remainder of that month and into Jan. 6 itself.”
While Boasberg’s ruling, according to Pence and others, says Pence is not required to reveal his interactions with members of Congress, it does not shield him from discussing Trump and other executive branch officials.
“Pence will likely be required to testify about everything outside his official duties in Congress on the 6th, so all of those conversations will likely be up for grabs,” Eisen said.
Trump and his inner circle began planning to use fraudulent slates of Trump “electors” well before the Electoral College met on Dec. 14, 2020, to ratify Biden’s victory. Indeed, that very morning, senior Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller appeared on Fox News and boasted of how pro-Trump slates of “alternate” electors were being chosen as he spoke so that Congress would have competing slates from key states, handing Trump’s allies the opportunity to give him a second term.
Trump and his aides began pressuring Pence to go along with the scheme in early December and ramped up their efforts after Christmas, according to former Pence advisers, and testimony revealed at the House Jan. 6 committee hearings.
The pressure campaign culminated in Trump’s Jan. 6 pre-insurrection speech near the White House, where he again called on Pence to do as he had demanded, even though Pence had already told Trump that he had no constitutional authority to do so. That afternoon, Trump attacked Pence for not having the “courage” to do what Trump wanted, and his mob responded by storming into the Capitol en masse.
Four of Trump’s followers died on Jan. 6, as did five police officers in the following days and weeks. Another 140 officers were injured, and the Justice Department is prosecuting over a thousand rioters, with at least hundreds more cases expected.
Despite this, Trump is running for the presidency again and is currently leading his rivals for the GOP nomination in polls. And while he initially denounced those who committed violence on Jan. 6, he has more recently embraced their actions and has promised to pardon them if elected. At a recent rally, he even featured a recording of Jan. 6 detainees – the vast majority charged with assaulting police officers – singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” interspersed with Trump’s reading of the Pledge of Allegiance.
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Following suit with other Republicans, Former Vice President Mike Pence slammed the indictment of former President Donald Trump in an exclusive interview Thursday with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
In the interview, which aired live hours after news broke of Trump’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, Pence admitted that “no one is above the law,” but still maintained that the indictment is “an outage.”
“I really do believe that this decision today is a great disservice to the country, and the idea that for the first time in American history a former president would be indicted on a campaign finance issue, to me it just smacks of political prosecution, and I think the overwhelming majority of the American people will see it that way,” Pence told Blitzer.
Asked whether he thought there were any circumstances that made it appropriate to criminally prosecute a former president, Pence replied: “No one is above the law.”
He added: “Including former presidents, to be clear on that point. The American people know this. But this case, a controversy over campaign finance, I can’t speak to the merit of this case at all … should never have risen to unprecedented historic prosecution.”
Trump’s indictment on Thursday appears to center on an investigation of a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
The Manhattan grand jury’s probe of the former president’s involvement in the hush money scheme has been ongoing for years. Other investigations of the former president include one into his attempts to change the results of the 2020 election and another into his involvement in inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
When Blitzer asked Pence if he was willing to testify before a federal grand jury over the Capitol riot, the former vice president maintained he had “nothing to hide” but stopped short of saying he would testify.
Pence has previously suggested that he would make an effort to avoid testifying in both the Jan. 6 probe and 2020 election results probe. He had blocked a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury for the Jan. 6 investigation, but earlier this week a judge ordered Pence to comply with the subpoena in the 2020 election investigation, and on Wednesday Pence hinted that he might drop legal battles to avoid testifying.
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Cedar Rapids, Iowa — Former Vice President Mike Pence is visiting Iowa on Wednesday as he grows closer to a decision about a 2024 presidential run.
Pence, who has visited the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina several times this month as part of a book tour, recently said he’s received “a lot of encouragement” to join the Republican primary field and indicated he will decide in the coming weeks.
“We’re getting closer to a decision,” Pence said in a recent Fox News interview. “To win back America in the months and years ahead, we’ve got to focus on what the American people are focused on and that is securing this country at home and abroad and bringing back this economy for working-class families.
While Pence tests the waters in Iowa, overshadowing his visit is a federal judge’s order calling for his testimony in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
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On Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington ruled that Pence must testify before a grand jury. Pence has resisted the demand and vowed to continue fighting, arguing that the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause offers him protection.
Pence said Wednesday that he is evaluating the judge’s order.
“We’re currently talking to our counsel about the balance of that decision and determining the way forward, but I have nothing to hide,” Pence said. “I’ve written and spoken extensively about that day and the days leading up to it.
Pence made similar remarks in an interview with Newsmax ahead of the visit, saying they will have a decision “in the coming days.”
The former vice president’s visit to the first-in-the-nation caucus state comes on the heels of campaign stops from declared candidates Trump and Nikki Haley. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also visited the state amid mounting speculation that he will soon announce his candidacy.
Pence, who was in Iowa earlier this month for a foreign policy-centered event, has three stops on Wednesday. He’ll meet with the West Side Conservative Club near Des Moines and then make his way east to Cedar Rapids for events in Linn County and Johnson County.
In recent speeches while promoting his new book, Pence has discussed his faith and how he is leaning on prayer as he decides his political future. At Liberty University on Tuesday, Pence said faith is the foundation of freedom and “renewing” that understanding “will preserve our freedom and lead America to a boundless future.”
The Iowa Republican Caucuses are a year away, but with several major GOP names having visited the state this month, voters and longtime activists are starting to consider their choices.
Trump came in second, behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, in the 2016 Iowa Republican Caucuses. He won the state in the 2016 and 2020 general election. But a recent Des Moines Register poll showed Trump’s favorability numbers dipping in the state.
According to the poll, Trump has a 44% very favorable rating in the state, followed by DeSantis at 42%, Pence had 17% favorability and Haley 16%. But only 47% of Iowa Republicans said they would vote for Trump if he is the GOP nominee in 2024.
While Trump’s popularity in Iowa remains high, there are indications that his support in the Hawkeye State could be cracking, opening an opportunity for someone like DeSantis, Haley — or Pence — to make a strong impression.
“I was a Trump supporter in the past two elections, but I am curious,” Teresa Egli told CBS News in Story County, Iowa, earlier this month. “I am kind of looking for a bit of freshness, I like his (Trump’s) policies but I’m ready for a fresh perspective.”
Trump’s policies remain popular among Iowa Republican voters but his demeanor, which has earned him attention and support in the past, is now being questioned by some voters in the Hawkeye State.
“I’m not sure he’s electable. I like a lot of his policies but his presentation leaves a lot to be desired,” Herb Beam told CBS News in Council Bluffs, a part of Iowa where Trump performed well in the 2016 caucuses.
That willingness from voters to look beyond Trump is partly why longtime Iowa Republican activists say any candidate can catch fire in this state.
“It is an open field,” Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of the Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa, told CBS News earlier this month. “Iowans are looking forward to seeing who all wants to run for president.”
Vander Plaats, an influential figure in Iowa GOP circles, said the reason the field is open in Iowa is because voters are wondering if Trump is “the right one to carry the baton in 2024.”
“So many people, even those who are wearing the MAGA hats, attended MAGA rallies, they still have this question, can he win in 2024?” Vander Plaats said.
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Mike Pence did a good thing on January 6, 2021, when he refused to bow to Donald Trump’s demands to block the certification of the 2020 election. Unfortunately for the country, that’s where the then vice president’s good deeds started and ended. For one thing, in the run-up to that day, Pence tried his damnedest to figure out a way to help Trump steal a second term. For another, in the years since, the ex-VP has shamelessly done everything in his power to ensure his former boss escapes any actual responsibility for inciting a violent insurrection, from stonewalling the January 6 committee to defying a subpoena from the special counsel investigating Trump. Meanwhile, Pence still can’t even bring himself to say he won’t vote for the guy who inspired the, “hang Mike Pence” chants on January 6, and who just this month declared that that insurrection? Was all Pence’s fault.
As you might imagine, all of this has been pretty frustrating for a lot of people—not least of all the federal judge who said Tuesday that Pence’s attempts to dodge the subpoena to appear before the grand jury probing Trump are crap, and that he must show up.
CNN and other outlets report that US District Court judge James Boasberg “has decided that…Pence must testify to a grand jury about conversations he had with Donald Trump leading up to January 6, 2021,” according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. (The ruling is currently under seal.) As CNN notes, the ruling represents a “major win” for Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland last year to oversee both the investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and his handling of classified documents. Among other dubious legal arguments, Pence had claimed that his chats with Trump are protected by executive privilege, which prevents him from providing testimony about them. Last month, J. Michael Luttig—a former federal appeals court judge, conservative, and the person whose counsel Pence listened to concerning certifying the 2020 results—said in an op-ed that that was, legally speaking, horseshit, writing: “We can expect the federal courts to make short shrift of this ‘Hail Mary’ claim, and Mr. Pence doesn’t have a chance in the world of winning his case in any federal court and avoiding testifying before the grand jury…. The only question now is not whether he will have to testify before the grand jury, but how soon.”
Pence still has the opportunity to appeal the decision and presumably will. In other less-than-great news, Boasberg ruled, per CNN, that the former VP “can still decline to answer questions related to his actions on January 6 itself, when he was serving as president of the Senate for the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” according to a source.
Still, requiring Trump’s ex-number two to testify about the conversations they had leading up to the attack on the Capitol is clearly a big deal, given that the 45th president spent weeks trying to convince Pence to block Joe Biden’s win:
In related news, last month, The New York Times reported that both Ivanka and Jared Kushner had been subpoenaed to testify before Smith’s grand jury. While it’s not clear if the former first daughter and son-in-law will put up a similar fight as the ex-VP, it is clear that Ivanka’s testimony would be of particular interest, given that she reportedly attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack in the reported hopes of keeping “her father from going too far.”
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Bess Levin
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that former Vice President Mike Pence will have to testify before a grand jury in the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
That’s according to two people familiar with the ruling, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it remains under seal.
The people said, however, that Pence would not have to answer questions about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the building as Pence was presiding over a joint session of Congress to certify the vote.
Pence and his attorneys had cited constitutional grounds in challenging the subpoena. They argued that, because he was serving in his capacity as president of the Senate that day, he was protected from being forced to testify under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which is intended to protect members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts.
Pence’s team is evaluating whether it will appeal.
The sealed ruling from U.S. District Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg sets up the unprecedented scenario of a former vice president being compelled to give potentially damaging testimony against the president he once served. And it comes as Pence has been inching closer to announcing a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, which would put him in direct competition with his former boss.
Pence was subpoenaed earlier this year to appear before the grand jury in Washington investigating election interference.
A Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to keep Trump in power. Multiple Trump aides have already appeared before the grand jury, as well as another panel examining Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.
A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Pence has spoken extensively about Trump’s pressure campaign urging him to reject President Joe Biden’s victory in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including in his book, “So Help Me God.” Pence, as vice president, had a ceremonial role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College vote, but did not have the power to impact the results.
Pence has said that Trump endangered his family and everyone else who was at the Capitol that day and said history will hold him “accountable.”
Colvin reported from New York.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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CNN
—
As former President Donald Trump heads to Texas on Saturday for his first major campaign rally, the handbrake remains on for most of his potential 2024 rivals.
Trump will appear in Waco just a week after he predicted his own arrest in connection with a hush money case from 2016. In the days since, anticipation grew over a potential indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, with Trump warning early Friday of “potential death and destruction” if he’s charged, though no action was taken this week.
This latest melodrama for the former president is unfolding during an uneasy period for the rest of the 2024 GOP presidential field, which is mostly frozen in place as a host of rumored contenders travel the country to test-run their messages while also seeking to avoid conflict with Trump.
The former president, though, operates on his own schedule and, along with his allies, used his own announcement about a coming indictment to test the loyalties of his fellow Republicans.
“We all need to be speaking up against the political persecution of President Trump,” right-wing Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted last weekend. “This is not the time for silence.”
What Trump and his supporters eventually heard was a field of would-be opponents rushing to their defense – yet another sign that former president’s grip on the Republican Party remains firmly in place.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has at times harshly criticized Trump over the latter’s role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, fell into line almost immediately after Trump’s prediction last week.
“The fact that the Manhattan DA thinks that indicting President Trump is his top priority, I think, it just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” Pence said in an ABC News interview last Sunday. “It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, remains the only other candidate with an established national profile to formally enter the race. She too backed Trump after he floated his expected arrest, saying the potential case against him was “more about revenge than it is about justice.”
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has projected a warrior-like persona in the run-up to his own expected campaign, is still months out from an announcement. Though he took a sharper, snarkier tone when discussing Trump’s legal troubles this week, it came as he faced the fallout from his own messy, conflicting series of remarks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, another potential contender, parried questions about Trump, and whether he was concerned by the behavior underlying the hush money case. Instead, he turned his ire on reporters and President Joe Biden.
“You know, one of the things I’d say is that red-on-red violence, so to speak, is something that the mass media enjoys,” Scott said on Fox New Thursday. “The road to socialism runs through a divided Republican Party. One thing we should do is keep our focus on the actual problem: That is President Biden.”
Further complicating DeSantis’s bid to shave support from Trump while energizing his own conservative base, his other would-be rivals – led by Haley and Pence – are increasingly framing him as a carbon copy of the former president.
The main difference: They can go after DeSantis without fear of reprisal from Trump or his supporters.
Pence has taken aim at DeSantis over the Florida governor’s home state war with Disney, which he targeted after the company pushed back against state GOP legislation banning certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The former vice president argued that DeSantis’ revocation of Disney’s special tax status went too far, and that such interventions violated his principles as a “limited government Republican.”
Both Pence and Haley have also insisted that “entitlement reform,” in the form of cutting benefits for seniors in an effort to combat what they’ve described as a funding crisis, would be on the table if they were elected. That position separates them from Trump and DeSantis – at least rhetorically – who have both pledged not to touch popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.
For his part, DeSantis has ignored pokes from more establishment-aligned Republicans, instead attempting to land subtle jabs on Trump. Asked about the rumors of Trump’s coming indictment, DeSantis on Monday said he “no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA,” a reference to Democrat Alvin Bragg and billionaire liberal donor George Soros.
But he followed that with a dig that raised the hackles of Trump and his top advisers.
“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” DeSantis said to laughs from some in the press corps. “I just, I can’t speak to that.”
Trump promptly responded by posting a series of personal attacks against DeSantis on social media.
“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are ‘underage’ (or possibly a man!),” Trump wrote. “I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!”
But his back-and-forth with Trump, which carried on after DeSantis landed a few more shots during an interview with Piers Morgan, was arguably less damaging to the Florida governor than his continued about-faces on Ukraine.
After being met with a barrage of criticism from prominent Republicans for initially describing Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” in a statement to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, DeSantis subsequently insisted to Morgan that he had only been addressing a longer-running part of the conflict focused in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
“That’s some difficult fighting,” DeSantis said of the region, “and that’s what I was referring to. And so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that (land), and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it.”
By Thursday, though, DeSantis has tracked back to a more populist position, saying in an interview with Newsmax that he cares “more about securing our own border in the United States than I do about the Russia-Ukraine border.”
The back-and-forth over Ukraine invited reproaches from Pence and Haley, along with foreign policy hawks like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who all at various times either mocked or scorned DeSantis’ comments
“When the United States supports Ukraine in their fight against Putin, we follow the Reagan doctrine, and we support those who fight our enemies on their shores, so we will not have to fight them ourselves,” Pence said in a statement. “There is no room for Putin apologists in the Republican Party.”
The broad backlash underscored DeSantis’ uniquely tricky path to the nomination. When he hewed to Trump’s position in his initial remarks, the party establishment and anti-Trump conservatives raced to condemn him.
But because DeSantis largely shares a voter base with the former president, staking out a clear position opposing Trump would be politically untenable.
It is a challenge he will need to meet – and solve – as the race becomes more intense and the waiting, for candidates and action in Trump’s legal cases, comes to an end.
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