Switching positions, Mike Pence announced Wednesday he will not appeal a federal judge’s ruling he must testify before the Dept. of Justice’s special counsel’s grand jury investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
“Vice President Pence will not appeal the Judge’s ruling and will comply with the subpoena as required by law,” his spokesperson said.
“Pence had originally said he would take his battle to quash the grand jury subpoena to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” HuffPost reports. “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.”
The former VP is “a critical firsthand witness to Trump’s statements as the attempted coup evolved,” former Obama White House attorney Norm Eisen told HuffPost. “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.”
The ex-vice president’s about-face is being viewed as “historic.”
“This Pence development today is significant and potentially historic. A former vice president is now willing, within certain specified constitutional grounds his lawyers fought to arrange, to testify about potential illegal acts by a president,” reports CBS News’ chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa via a series of tweets.
Costa goes on to note, as others have as well, that “Trump’s lawyers might try to appeal Pence’s decision, but they keep losing efforts to assert exec[utive] priv[ilege] with this grand jury.”
“That means Pence could appear before Jan. 6 grand jury in the coming weeks to testify under oath about what exactly Trump did and said in private,” he adds.
Looking at the big picture, Costa offers: “Think about what this means. The special counsel could now get a first-hand account of what Trump specifically said to Pence in Oval Office meetings ahead of Jan. 6, as long as Pence and his lawyers do not consider those conversations related to his specific constitutional role.”
“Pence has long been reluctant to talk at all, even to confidants, about what Trump has said to him in private. Pence has protected his confidence with Trump for years. But he is also someone who knows a subpoena to testify is what it is: a demand to follow the rule of law.”
To support his thesis, Costa adds, “Pence’s spokesman’s statement today underscores that he will follow the rule of law. A sign of where he stands, how he’ll handle. So as long as special counsel asks questions that are arguably outside realm of ‘President of Senate’ hat Pence wore as VP, testimony seems possible.”