Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. The effort relied in large part on Pence accepting fake slates of electors for Trump – a scheme that is also the subject of the criminal investigation – to create a pretext for casting doubt on the election results and stopping Biden from becoming president. In the wake of election day, Trump tried to pressure Pence into helping him reverse his defeat by using his largely ceremonial role as the presiding officer of the Senate on January 6 to reject legitimate slates of electors for Biden and prevent his certification. ![]() But Trump’s legal team disagreed, and filed an emergency motion to the US appeals court for the DC circuit – which was denied late on Wednesday by judges Gregory Katsas, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins.Ī lawyer on the team representing Trump in the special counsel cases could not say whether they would appeal the ruling to a higher court, though such a move is not expected. The subpoena was challenged by Trump’s lawyers, who invoked executive privilege to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony, as well as by Pence’s lawyer, who argued his role as president of the Senate on January 6 meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch.īoth requests to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony were largely denied by the new chief US judge for the court, James Boasberg, who issued a clearcut denial to Trump and a more nuanced ruling to Pence that upheld that he was protected in part by “speech or debate” protections.Īs a result, the former vice-president’s team declined to challenge the ruling. Prosecutors have been trying to get Pence’s testimony for months, starting with requests from the justice department last year and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Smith, who inherited the sprawling criminal investigation. The two interactions are of particular investigative interest to the special counsel Jack Smith as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct the certification and defraud the United States in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results. Pence is considered a potentially consequential witness because Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress and was at a December 2021 meeting at the White House with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win. ![]() ![]() The sealed ruling by the US appeals court for the DC circuit on Wednesday marks the end of Trump’s efforts to keep Pence from divulging information to federal prosecutors, unless his legal team takes the unlikely step of challenging the decision before the full DC circuit or the supreme court.
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