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Former Vice President Mike Pence testifies to grand jury investigating Trump and Jan. 6 attack [1]
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Date: 2023-04-27
Former Vice President Mike Pence testified on Thursday to a federal grand jury investigating then-President Donald Trump and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
CNN reported:
The testimony marks a momentous juncture in the criminal investigation and the first time in modern history a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president he served beside. Pence testified for more than five hours, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, and while adviser Marc Short did not confirm the appearance on Thursday, he addressed the legal back-and-forth over the testimony.
The grand jury was convened by special counsel Jack Smith, who is also investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home.
Pence was testifying for the first time under oath about his direct conversations with Trump leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He declined to testify before the House Jan. 6 select committee.
Short and another top Pence aide, Greg Jacob, did testify to the House select committee and described how Trump, working with such allies as attorney John Eastman, pressured Pence to disrupt the normal counting of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, as part of a scheme to keep Trump in office.
Both Short and Jacob had previously testified to the federal grand jury convened by Smith to hear evidence.
Both Pence and Trump went to court to block the former vice president from having to respond to the subpoena to testify before the grand jury.
On Wednesday night, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an emergency attempt by Trump to block Pence from testifying about their direct conversations.
A judge earlier had given Pence the ability to avoid answering questions about his actions when he served as the presiding officer of the Senate on Jan. 6. The courts cited the Speech and Debate Clause which safeguards Congress from law enforcement inquiries related to their official duties. But much of what Smith wants to know relates to discussions before Jan. 6.
Pence did describe some of his interactions with Trump leading up to Jan. 6 in a memoir published last year.
CNN wrote:
In the book, Pence wrote that Trump told him in the days before the attack that he would inspire the hatred of hundreds of thousands of people because he was “too honest” to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The former vice president also said in the book that he asked his general counsel for a briefing on the procedures of the Electoral Count Act after Trump in a December 5 phone call “mentioned challenging the election results in the House of Representatives for the first time.” Over lunch on December 21, Pence wrote, he tried to steer Trump to listen to the White House counsel’s team’s advice, rather than outside lawyers, a suggestion the then-president shot down. And Pence wrote that Trump told him in a New Year’s Day phone call: “You’re too honest,” predicting that “hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts” and “people are gonna think you’re stupid.”
Here is what MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner had to say:
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