Mike Pence subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith

The former vice-president will have to face questions from special counsel Jack Smith over Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.

Former president Donald Trump speaks alongside Mike Pence. The two are facing questions by a special counsel over the 2020 election.

Former vice-president Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith, who is looking into former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss.

The move represents an escalation in the Justice Department investigation and sets the stage for a likely court battle over executive privilege, which lawyers for Mr Trump have raised to block or slow the testimony of former administration officials.

It couldn’t immediately be ­determined when Mr Smith ­issued the subpoena to Mr Pence, or what specifically federal prosecutors are seeking.

Mr Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, and his former counsel, Greg Jacob, last year ­appeared before a federal grand jury as part of the investigation into Mr Trump’s efforts to discredit the 2020 election results.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland appointed Mr Smith in November to examine efforts to undo the election results as well as to probe the handling of classified documents found at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. That probe has intensified over a year to include an ­extraordinary warrant-backed search of the property in August.

Mr Pence declined to speak to a congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, ­assault on the US Capitol by Mr Trump’s supporters. But the former vice-president has viewed the Justice Department investigation as different from the House of Representatives ­inquiry, which he considered ­partisan.

The issuing of a subpoena to Mr Pence comes as his legal team has been in discussions with the Justice Department over a search of his Indiana home for classified documents in the coming days, after his lawyers said they found a small number of such documents in the home and turned them over to authorities. While Mr Pence declined to speak with the House January 6 committee, the panel’s public hearings highlighted Mr Trump’s efforts to pressure his vice-president to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Ahead of January 6, 2021, Mr Trump pushed for Mr Pence to break from the vice-president’s ceremonial role over the certification of the Electoral College vote and embrace a legal theory, advanced by conservative lawyer John Eastman, that he could unilaterally reject votes from certain states or suspend vote counting to turn the matter back to the states.

One of the committee’s public hearings featured testimony from J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge who advised Mr Pence.

“There was no basis in the constitution or laws of the United States at all for the theory ­espoused by Mr Eastman, at all. None,” he testified, calling the attempt “constitutional mischief”.

In a speech to his supporters on January 6, 2021, Mr Trump pointed to Mr Pence as a pivotal figure in his hopes of remaining in office. “We fight like hell … ­Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” he said. Later that day, as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, some chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Mr Pence said last year Mr Trump “endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building”, where he was joined by his wife and daughter. In his memoir, So Help Me God, Mr Pence recounted his outrage at a pro-Trump mob that “desecrated the seat of our democracy and dishonoured the patriotism of millions of our supporters”.

Mr Trump is so far the only ­declared GOP candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Mr Pence is a potential rival for the Republican nomination. Mr Biden, who is facing a separate special counsel investigation into classified documents found at his Delaware home and at the Penn Biden Centre, is widely expected to mount a run for re-election.

The Wall Street Journal