Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared for seven hours before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot Thursday — one day after a federal appeals court rejected a bid by former President Donald Trump to block him from doing so.
A three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, consisting of a Trump appointee and two appointees of former President Barack Obama, had issued a sealed order denying the 76-year-old’s appeal late Wednesday.
NBC News was first to report on Pence’s appearance.
A rep for the former VP declined comment, while a rep for special counsel Jack Smith had nothing to say about the Wednesday appeals court ruling.
Spokespeople and lawyers for Trump remained mum on the development.
The former vice president and potential presidential candidate had said he would comply with a judge’s order to discuss the riot on the record as the federal panel weighs obstruction and conspiracy charges against Trump and his allies.
After four years of fealty to Trump, Pence, 63, issued a blistering rebuke of his boss’ calls to overturn the 2020 election, writing in his memoir “So Help Me God” last year that the 45th president’s “reckless words had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Pence oversaw the congressional certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory that day, a process which was halted for hours as thousands of rioters forced their way into the Capitol to try to forcibly stop the count — with some of them chanting for Pence to be hanged.
Pence took the witness stand as he considers challenging Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Polls currently show Trump way out in front of the declared pack of GOP contenders in his third straight White House bid, even as he faces dozens of felony business fraud charges and multiple federal and state criminal probes in addition to Smith’s Jan. 6 inquiry.
Pence was subpoenaed by Smith in February, prompting Trump’s team to attempt to invoke executive privilege to block the grand jury from hearing from the former vice president.
That request was blocked by a judge last month, though the court did rule that Pence could not be forced to answer questions about his presiding over the certification of the election results.
The former president had appealed that ruling to the DC Circuit.
“We’ll obey the law, we’ll tell the truth,” Pence told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.
“And the story that I’ve been telling the American people all across the country, the story that I wrote in the pages of my memoir, that’ll be the story I tell in that setting.”
One line in the book about Pence’s relationship with Trump may have offered a clue to how his testimony would play out.
“For four years, we had a close working relationship,” it reads. “It did not end well.”
With Post wires
