Mike Pence has said he will comply with a judge’s order and testify to a grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump, though, is going for one more court loss with a long-shot appeal of the order for Pence to testify.
Trump’s efforts to invoke executive privilege to prevent his former administration officials from testifying before a number of probes have not gone well, but hope, or maybe delusional ego or just the plain old will to delay, springs eternal. CNN reports that seal filings at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals don’t show Trump seeking an emergency intervention—although Pence could be called to testify as early as next week—and that a Trump lawyer was seen at the courthouse on Monday.
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Pence had attempted to get out of testifying under a different rationale than executive privilege. He had claimed that his role as the president of the Senate, a role he was inhabiting on Jan. 6, meant that he was protected by the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which exempts members of Congress from ever facing any kind of consequence for anything they did in relation to their office. He agreed to testify, though, after a judge’s order exempting him from testifying to certain things specifically related to Jan. 6 and his Senate role.
Pence is not the only person whose testimony Trump has tried to block with executive privilege claims. He also lost executive privilege claims relating to a number of other former aides, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
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Our planned Ukraine episode will have to wait, as Donald Trump is being arraigned in New York City for his role in falsifying records to hide hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. This is the first of a potential slew of indictments coming Trump’s way, and we are here for a celebration of karmic justice—and to talk about what happens to the Republican Party after this.