Former Vice President Pence testifies to federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump and January 6
Pence Testifies to Federal Grand Jury Investigating Trump
Former Vice President Mike Pence testified Thursday before a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of then-President Donald Trump and others, sources familiar with the matter.
The testimony represents a major milestone in a criminal investigation, and for the first time in modern history, a vice president was forced to testify about the president he served alongside.
Pence was prepared to recount for the first time under oath his direct conversations with Trump leading up to January 6, 2021. Trump has repeatedly unsuccessfully pressured him to block the outcome of the 2020 election, including in a private phone call on the morning of January 6. A federal judge previously ruled that Pence could be forced to recount conversations between the two men where Trump may have acted corruptly.
Pence’s meeting with investigators comes as he explores a possible challenge to Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, with his testimony likely to draw a strong backlash from his former boss.
In his political appearances and recent book tour, Pence often talks about refusing to comply with Trump’s Jan. 6 order and following the Constitution instead. But he avoided being sworn in as part of any investigation.
The grand jury in Washington, DC, whose deliberations are secret, convened just before 9 a.m. ET on Thursday. This coincided with increased security inside the courthouse, and two SUVs with tinted windows were seen ferrying people into the building.
Court battle
Special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to block the election has long sought to question Pence under oath given his closeness to Trump in the White House.
Both Pence and Trump went to court to delay their unprecedented subpoenas. However, trial and appellate judges ordered Pence to testify about his direct conversations with the then-president — rulings that were consistent with several other losing cases that have dealt with Trump as he sought to block top officials in his administration from testifying.
The latest ruling — from the D.C. Circuit Court, which denied Trump emergency relief — came Wednesday night.
The case put Pence in a unique position to define the powers of his former office — and the court even gave the former vice president the ability to avoid criminal charges while serving as Senate president in January. 6. Still, a grand jury could accomplish much of what Smith’s team seems to care about.
Communications between Pence and Trump before January 6
Trump’s conversations with and about Pence in the days leading up to the riots at the US Capitol were of great interest to investigators investigating the attack.
Although Pence declined to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the uprising, people in Trump’s orbit told the committee about a heated phone call he had with Pence on the day of the attack in which he insulted his vice president. Pence and Trump did not speak during the attack on the Capitol itself, in which many Trump supporters angrily sought him out, and Pence narrowly escaped a crowd heading for the Senate floor.
Much of what is known about Trump’s communications with Pence leading up to the uprising comes from a memoir the former vice president released last year, as well as from people who testified in the House of Representatives inquiry into the attack.
Nicholas Luna, a former special assistant to Trump, said he remembers Trump calling Pence “a weakling.” Luna said he remembered something to the effect of Trump saying, “I made a bad decision four or five years ago.”
And Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump’s former chief of staff, said she remembered Ivanka Trump telling her that “her dad just had an upsetting conversation with the vice president.”
Radford said she was told Trump called Pence the “P word,” referring to the derogatory term.
As for Pence, many of his public comments about his conversations with Trump in the days before and after the uprising he released in his memoirs.
In the book, Pence wrote that Trump told him in the days before the attack that he would incite the hatred of hundreds of thousands of people because he was “too honest” to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The former vice president also said in the book that he asked his general counsel to brief him on the procedures of the Election Count Act after Trump “first mentioned challenging the results of the House of Representatives” in a Dec. 5 phone call. “
During the Dec. 21 lunch, Pence wrote that he tried to get Trump to listen to the advice of the White House counsel team rather than outside lawyers, a suggestion that the then-president shot down.
And Pence wrote that Trump told him “you’re too honest” in a New Year’s phone call, predicting that “hundreds of thousands are going to hate your guts” and “people are going to think you’re stupid.”
“Mr. President, I don’t dispute that there were irregularities and fraud,” Pence wrote that he told Trump. “It’s just a matter of who makes the decision and under the law, which is Congress.”
