Former US Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump’s role in the Capitol riot and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, it was reported Thursday.
Special counsel Jack Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November to oversee investigations into Trump’s destructive actions towards the end of his presidency. Smith has experience prosecuting a sitting US senator, gang members convicted of murdering NYC police officers, and most recently worked as a Kosovo war crimes prosecutor at The Hague.
Smith is also overseeing a separate probe into the mishandling by Trump of some 11,000 government documents and his obstruction of government attempts to retrieve those documents, 300 of which were marked as classified or top secret.
The subpoena, which was first reported by ABC News, requests documents as well as testimony from Pence about Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election in an effort to stay in power and the related January 6 attack on the Capitol. It will come as no shock to Pence, whose legal team has been working with federal prosecutors on negotiations regarding the probe for months.
If Pence chooses to invoke claims of executive privilege as a way to avoid the probe it could cause a long and contentious legal battle between prosecutors and Pence’s legal team. Trump, likewise, has evoked executive privilege in an attempt to delay and block multiple investigations into his conduct several times.
Pence was publicly blamed by Trump for his “loss” of power. Two months after Trump lost the Oval Office to then-President elect Joe Biden, he urged Pence to use his ceremonial role in overseeing the congressional certification of the Electoral College results as a way to overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021.
Pence refused the order, causing Trump to berate him as a “wimp”. Trump then tweeted a condemnation of Pence, stirring the January 6, 2021 rioters to begin chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” during their attack on the Capitol.