At the end of their time in office, President Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence had a fight. The two men disagreed about Pence’s decision to certify the 2020 election. Now, a court has decided that the man who used to be Trump’s right-hand man has to testify.
Multiple news sources said that on March 27, Judge James E. Boasberg issued a sealed ruling that said Pence must testify before a grand jury about his conversations with Trump before January 6. The ruling was related to reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith was looking into what the former president did after the 2020 general election. The New York Times said that the judge gave the former vice president a small win by letting him not answer questions about what he did when he certified the vote count on January 6.
The report says that prosecutors want Pence to talk about what, if anything, the former president wanted him to do on January 6, when he was in charge of the Electoral College votes. Trump’s lawyers have tried to stop the former vice president from testifying by saying that executive privilege protects him. Pence’s lawyers also said that he shouldn’t have to go before the grand jury because the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution protects him.
Media: "A federal judge has ordered @Mike_Pence to appear before a grand jury investigating #DonaldTrump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, largely sweeping aside two separate legal efforts … to limit his testimony." @alanfeuer @maggieNYT https://t.co/0g2BEVVmJP pic.twitter.com/CDahQA4zRg
— Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) March 28, 2023
Another judge also said that former Trump administration officials, such as Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, couldn’t use executive privilege to get out of testifying in front of the grand jury. In the Pence case, Boasberg is said to have said that the former vice president would have to talk to the grand jury about any crimes that the former president might have committed during the January 6 riots.
The January 6 Committee said that Trump kept putting pressure on Pence to use his power as president of the Senate to change the results of the 2020 election and refuse to certify the win. The former president said in public that his vice president should have done that.
No one knows when Pence might have to testify. The actions of a grand jury are kept secret.
