Former vice president Mike Pence will not appeal a court ruling compelling him to heed a subpoena to testify before the federal grand jury investigating former president Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
A spokesperson for Mr Pence, Devin O’Malley, said in a statement that the ex-vice president wouldn’t seek to overturn a ruling from US District Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who earlier this week held that Mr Pence must give evidence about his interactions with Mr Trump because Judge Boasberg also found that Mr Pence could not be forced to testify about actions he took in his ceremonial role of President of the Senate when he presided over Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Mr Pence had sought to preclude his appearance before the grand jury on the grounds that testimony about his Congressional role could not be compelled because of a provision of the US Constitution that protects members of Congress from being questioned about their official duties.
Attorneys for Mr Trump had also argued that executive privilege — a legal doctrine that protects deliberations between and among a president and his advisers — also precluded Mr Pence from giving evidence about his interactions with Mr Trump and his aides, but Judge Boasberg rejected those arguments in his opinion, which remains sealed but has been reported on by multiple news outlets.
“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,” Mr O’Malley said. “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”.
Mr Pence’s decision not to appeal the court’s ruling means he could soon be answering questions from grand jurors and federal prosecutors under the supervision of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department probe into the attack.
The former vice president’s testimony could add to the legal peril Mr Trump may face from Mr Smith, who is also supervising a separate federal probe into the ex-president’s alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida residence, as well as his alleged obstruction of that investigation.
Mr Trump is also facing a separate investigation into his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and he is currently under indictment in his home state of New York, where on Tuesday he was arraigned on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme to keep negative stories about him from surfacing before the 2016 election.
