Washington Monthly: Pence to Trump: I Just Can’t Quit You
Presidential Reform co-chair Jack Goldsmith is quoted in this article from Washington Monthly.
Mike Pence has refused to appear before the federal grand jury investigating the events of January 6. Will this throw a possible monkey wrench into the wheels of justice? Is there a chance he can get out of testifying? After all, he balked at speaking to the January 6 Commission and prevailed.
There’s a reason that Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating both the attempts to overturn the election and the Mar-a-Lago documents, wants to speak with the former vice president. Pence was an eyewitness to a crime against democracy. Whether or not the former Indiana governor wants to cooperate with Smith’s inquiry, there’s little doubt that he has information about how exactly Donald Trump implored him to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential results. Having been rushed out of the Senate chamber to a secure location, the 63-year-old knows well what the president did or didn’t do to tame the mob.
Pence tries to dismiss the grand jury subpoena as “the Biden D.O.J. subpoena.” While this assertion may appeal to Pence’s electoral base, or what’s left of it, it is undoubtedly doomed in court, where a special counsel will be taken seriously, especially someone with Smith’s cred. He ran the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice and is a former prosecutor and was recently at the Hague.