Last Friday, Mike Pence appeared before a federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Pence reportedly testified for over five hours, with particular attention given to conversations between Pence and Donald Trump in the weeks leading up to the insurrection on Jan. 6.
Now CNN is reporting that Pence didn’t just talk to the grand jury and the attorneys usually assigned to ask questions of witnesses. Special counsel Jack Smith was present throughout Pence’s testimony. Smith didn’t join the hearing to listen, but reportedly interacted with Pence directly, though it's not clear if that means that the special counsel got involved in Pence’s questioning. What is clear is that Smith thought Pence’s testimony highly important. According to CNN, this is the first time he appeared at the federal courthouse to hear testimony.
Meanwhile, as Smith was personally dealing with one of the two tasks the special counsel was given by Attorney General Merrick Garland, members of his staff were reportedly focusing on the other half of his twin bill: The documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago and refused to return despite multiple attempts. CBS reports that those investigators are taking a closer look at security camera footage showing boxes of documents being moved around both before and after investigators visited Trump in an attempt to retrieve the documents.
According to CNN, prosecutors are also looking into whether surveillance footage could have been tampered with after Trump’s attorneys were notified of the subpoena.
When Smith was first appointed, he was given the twin tasks of investigating both Trump’s post-election efforts to overturn the 2020 results, and how Trump had handled documents—particularly classified documents—held at Mar-a-Lago.
On his first task, many seemed to assume that Smith would merely repeat much of the work done by the House select committee that investigated the events leading up to Jan. 6. However, Smith has clearly taken a much broader view of events. The testimony that he has sought makes it clear that he is looking into multiple aspects of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, including:
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Pressuring local and state officials, from county election supervisors to the Georgia secretary of state, in an effort to get them to either manufacture additional votes for Trump or hide some of the votes for Biden.
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Executive orders that would have taken election equipment into custody to help support false claims of issues surrounding voting machines.
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Trump campaign workers working with local supporters to break into the software of voting machines.
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The entire step-by-step scheme that led to Jan. 6, which included pushing state legislators to appoint “alternative electors,” creating an interpretation of election law that turned Jan. 6 from a ceremonial event into a definitive action, and all the efforts Trump made to pressure representatives and senators both through direct appeal and by soliciting his followers to go “wild.”
That’s where Pence comes in. While on the actual day, Pence did not follow Trump’s script insisting that he refuse to count the votes from a number of states that President Joe Biden won, he was clearly pressured to do so—even going so far as calling Dan Quayle for an ethics check. The multiple sessions in which Pence was pushed to participate in Trump’s scheme, including an infamous Oval Office meeting, were likely the primary subjects of his lengthy testimony.
What Pence had to say about these meetings may be the most consequential testimony heard by the grand jury. Smith’s presence at the hearing shows that he clearly felt this was extremely important. What Pence had to say could potentially determine whether Trump faces changes of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
At the other end of Smith’s investigation, numerous witnesses have already testified before another grand jury looking into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. That includes members of the Secret Service who were left in the confusing position of sitting on the sidelines while the man they were assigned to protect engaged in illegal activity.
The new video evidence apparently involves cameras showing boxes of what are suspected to be those documents being moved to different locations in Mar-a-Lago both before and after the National Archives and FBI attempted to recover the material. Those videos may also reveal some of those who had access to the material, which reportedly included highly classified information on Iran’s nuclear program.
2023 may be an off-year, but that just means Virginia takes its traditional place as one of the key states to watch. With odd-year state elections, Virginia has often been a key bellwether for the rest of the country and this year is no different. Both the State Senate and the General Assembly are up and both chambers could be won by either party. Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer joins us to preview the key races in both the June primary and the fall general election.