Mike Pence to testify before court in Jan 6 probe

Former vice president Mike Pence has announced that he will be complying with the subpoena and testifying before the court in the special counsel’s investigation concerning Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results in 2020, a foreign news agency reported on Thursday.

During the investigation, Mike Pence will also be testifying regarding the conversations he had with the former president ahead of the Capitol Hill incident on January 6, 2021.

Pence, 63, was subpoenaed in February by the special counsel Jack Smith. Pence said he will not be filing an appeal to the judge’s ruling who ordered him to comply with the subpoena.  

A spokesman of former vice president, Devin O’Malley, said in a statement that “Vice President Mike Pence swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and his claim that the Biden Special Counsel’s unprecedented subpoena was unconstitutional under the Speech or Debate Clause was an important one made to preserve the Separation of Powers outlined by our Founders.”

“In the Court’s decision, that principle prevailed. The Court’s landmark and historic ruling affirmed for the first time in history that the Speech or Debate Clause extends to the Vice President of the United States. 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.”

Earlier, Mike Pence and Donald Trump were making efforts to appeal the judge’s ruling that ordered the former VP to testify against the latter but they were dismissed by Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, according to NBC. 

The judge maintained that Pence is immune to testifying about the legislative proceedings of the Senate but he is not immune to testifying against the conversations related to alleged “illegality” on Trump’s part.

The day of Mike’s appearance before the grand jury in Washington is not yet known since the case remains under seal.

Prosecutors are aimed to investigate the attempts Trump carried out on the day of the Capitol Hill incident to block the clarification of the election.

Mike Pence had already published his memoir and an op-ed in Wall Street Journal and wrote in detail about his interaction with Trump in the days before the Capitol Hill incident.