The appeals court ruled that the executive privilege shield should be lifted for former aides
The Dead Bang Obstruction of Justice in the Run Up to January 6, 2016: When Pence and the National Enquirer met at the Capitol
The latest adverse developments for Trump in the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases came with the ex-president still waiting in the investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg centering on a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump called for protests last week, after wrongly predicting that he would be arrested.
Three crushing legal blows against Trump and his lawyers in investigations conducted by special counsel Jack Smith threaten to expose with fresh clarity his conduct in the run up to the US Capitol insurrection and his hoarding of classified documents.
But in a sealed judgment that threaded a legal needle, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court in Washington, DC, found that Pence must testify to the grand jury about conversations he had with Trump in the run up to January 6, multiple sources familiar with the ruling said. But the judge also said Pence can still decline to answer certain questions related to his role on January 6, when his official role as president of the Senate was to preside over the certification of Biden’s election victory.
The January 6 ruling came just days after another court decision against Trump that he could not stop the testimony of some of his administration’s top officials.
Trump’s latest appeal is aimed at a Howell decision ordering a constellation of former Trump aides to give grand jury testimony. The former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, and the former national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, are among those previously told by CNN.
I think Justice has some pressure to bring this to a conclusion. To me, based on the way it is shaping up, it is a dead bang obstruction of justice case,” Jones said, underscoring that a case against Trump might be made not just for the mishandling of classified material but for possible false statements to the government about such documents.
According to sources who are familiar with the proceedings, the grand jury wouldn’t be considering the case again this week, bringing fresh intrigue to the anticipation built after Trump made his initial statement. On Monday, in a possible sign that prosecutors were trying to solidify their case, the grand jury heard from David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer. He was a key player in negotiating the payment in an alleged scheme that previously landed Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, in jail.
A prosecutor in Georgia said at the end of January that charges were imminent in his investigation into whether to overturn Biden’s victory in the pivotal swing state of Georgia. CNN reported last week that prosecutors are considering racketeering charges.
Not only is Trump apparently in severe jeopardy of becoming the first former president to be indicted, but his campaign to return to the White House in 2024 – while potentially being criminally charged – raises the possibility of an extraordinary political uproar. It is certain that the country will go to war because Trump is already fanning the flames. At a campaign rally in Texas last weekend, the ex-president folded various probes against him into a single false conceit: that the Biden administration is seeking to weaponize the justice system against him to steal the 2024 election.
The ruling was a fascinating development for its multiple legal and constitutional implications. It is not clear if any questions will be declined to answer under oath.
But he could also blur the legal technicalities by arguing that he stood up to the Biden administration’s Justice Department – a potentially useful weapon in a GOP presidential debate. And he may have even clarified and expanded the scope of the office of the vice presidency in establishing new interpretations on the Speech or Debate Clause. The latter question would need to be considered definitive by appeals court or Supreme Court consideration of Speech or Debate Clause cases.
The requirements for my testimony are currently under review and I will have more to say about that in the days ahead.
The former vice president also said in his recently published book that he asked his general counsel for a briefing on the procedures of the Electoral Count Act after Trump, in a December 5, 2020, phone call, “mentioned challenging the election results in the House of Representatives for the first time.”
In another recent ruling, Howell’s successor, Chief Judge James Boasberg, rejected Trump’s executive privilege challenge to a subpoena for former Vice President Mike Pence. The judge gave Pence some protections under the constitutional clause that shields legislative activities from law enforcement actions. It is unclear if any of the parties will appeal Boasberg’s ruling.
Last year, the former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, were summoned to testify before the grand jury after Trump lost an apparent executive privilege challenge.
Howell’s order was issued under seal, and the litigation that preceded it also played out in secret. The docket of Trump’s new appeal provides few details and does not identify the parties or the specifics about the case. But it says a notice of appeal has been filed.
