Former US Vice President Mike Pence testifies in front of a federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump and the January 6 capitol riots.

On Thursday, April 27, former US Vice President Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election and the actions of then-President Donald Trump and others.


It is the first time in modern history that a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president with whom he served.

Trump repeatedly pressured Pence unsuccessfully to block the 2020 election’s result, including the morning of January 6 on a private phone call, and a federal judge previously ruled Pence could be compelled to recount conversations the two men had where Trump may have been acting corruptly.

Pence testified for more than five hours on Thursday, according to CNN.

“I think that the vice president, you know, had his own case based on the Speech and Debate Clause. He was pleased that for the first time a judge acknowledged that it applied to the vice president of the United States,” Pence adviser Marc Short said in an interview on NewsNation afterward.

 

“But he was willing to comply with the law, and courts have ordered him to testify.”

Pence was poised to recount for the first time under oath his direct conversations with Trump leading up to January 6, 2021.

Pence’s meeting with investigators comes as he is exploring a possible challenge to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, with his testimony likely to cause more friction between him and his former boss.

 

Both Pence and Trump went to court to hold off his unprecedented subpoena. But trial and appellate judges ordered Pence to testify about his direct conversations with the then-President.