Judge required Pence to answer most of special counsel's questions, newly unsealed court docs show

Source: Politico

By KYLE CHENEY
06/09/2023 10:18 PM EDT

The figures pressuring Mike Pence to reject Joe Biden’s electoral votes on Jan. 6 were asking him to act “unlawfully,” the chief judge of Washington D.C.’s federal district court ruled in a secret April decision.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s 19-page opinion — which the judge partially unsealed Friday at the urging of media organizations — cleared the way for special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors to question the former vice president about his conversations with a wide array of figures who leaned on him to reject Biden’s electors, possibly including Donald Trump.

“The bottom line is that conversations exhorting Pence to reject electors on January 6th are not protected,” Boasberg wrote in the ruling, dated March 27, adding, “There is no dispute in this case that Pence lacked the authority to reject certified electoral votes.”

Pence appeared for that closed-door testimony on April 27 and answered questions for more than six hours. The substance of the questions and answers remain almost entirely shielded from public view but nevertheless marked a historic moment in Smith’s unprecedented criminal probe of Trump and his allies’ efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/09/judge-required-pence-to-answer-most-of-special-counsels-questions-newly-unsealed-court-docs-show-00101381