WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence appeared before a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s position in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a supply acquainted with the matter instructed Reuters on Thursday.
Pence was inside U.S. District Court in Washington for greater than seven hours, ABC News and NBC News reported earlier. Representatives for Pence had no remark.
The former vice chairman’s look before the grand jury comes as he’s exploring a doable problem to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Security was beefed up on the federal courthouse in Washington and a bomb-sniffing canine was noticed within the hallway.
Trump, who introduced late final 12 months his bid for the White House for 2024, was recently indicted in a separate probe in New York over alleged hush funds.
On Wednesday, Trump lost an attraction to dam Pence from testifying within the particular counsel probe, in keeping with CNN.
Earlier this month, Pence disclosed that he wouldn’t attraction a choose’s ruling that required him to testify to the federal grand jury about conversations he had with Trump main as much as the lethal assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Special Counsel Jack Smith took over the probe into efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, together with a plot to submit phony slates of electors to dam Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
Ahead of the 2021 Capitol assaults by Trump supporters, the then-president repeatedly lambasted Pence for refusing to attempt to forestall Congress from certifying Biden’s win within the 2020 election.
Trump can be going through different authorized hurdles as effectively, together with a separate particular counsel probe into his dealing with of categorized paperwork and a probe in Georgia associated to alleged interference with the state’s 2020 election.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Costas Pitas; Editing by Tim Ahmann
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
