Former vice president Mike Pence received a subpoena from the special counsel investigating key aspects of the sprawling probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Jack Smith — the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the day-to-day operations of the investigation — is also heading a separate criminal probe into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home.
The Pence subpoena is related to Jan. 6, according to the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The subpoena comes after months of negotiations between the Justice Department and Pence.
ABC News first reported news of the subpoena. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. A spokesman for Pence also declined to comment.
Pence becomes the highest-level person in Trump’s orbit publicly known to be subpoenaed as part of the investigation, and the move is the latest indication that the extensive probe is pushing forward. It could pit two potential presidential candidates against each other; Trump has launched his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination, and Pence is considered a potential challenger.
It is unclear whether Pence will comply with the subpoena. His advisers had previously said he was not interested in appearing before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Pence has told people privately that he has concerns about testifying against Trump because of executive privilege, according to the person familiar with the matter.
Pence is presumably the only witness to one-on-one conversations he had with Trump, and prosecutors may feel they need to, at a minimum, attempt to get his version of events under oath.
The court-issued inquiry to Pence comes as Smith’s probe has been intensifying. In December, a grand jury issued a wide-ranging subpoena to Trump campaign officials, asking questions about Jan. 6 and who was footing their legal bills, The Washington Post previously reported.
The Post also reported that subpoenas were received in late November and December by local and state election officials in states that President Biden narrowly won and where Trump and his allies claimed there was fraud.
During the attack on the Capitol, many rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” because they were angry that Pence didn’t use his position to help overturn the results of the 2020 election.
As the insurrection was unfolding, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
Pence has offered an account of his version of what occurred and how he has viewed Trump’s actions that day in “So Help Me God,” his book issued late last year, and his interviews promoting it.
The former vice president publicly suggested that Trump got bad legal advice and downplayed the idea that he saw criminal conduct.
“Well, I don’t know if it is criminal to listen to bad advice from lawyers,” Pence told NBC last year. “The truth is, what the president was repeating is what he was hearing from that gaggle of attorneys around him. Presidents, just like all of us that have served in public life, you have to rely on your team, you have to rely on the credibility of the people around you. And so, as time goes on, I hope we can move beyond this, beyond that prospect. And this is really a time when our country ought to be healing.”
Pence also said in an interview with ABC’s “World News Tonight” that Trump’s rhetoric was “reckless” and that the former president’s actions “endangered” members of the Pence family and those trapped inside the building that day.
In a separate matter, federal law enforcement officials are in discussions with Pence’s legal team to perform a consensual search of his Indiana home to ensure there are no classified materials on his property, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
In late January, a lawyer for Pence said that the former vice president brought in outside counsel with experience handling classified materials to search records stored in his Indiana home “out of an abundance of caution” after news broke that materials were discovered at Biden’s properties.
The lawyer, Greg Jacob, said in a Jan. 18 letter to the National Archives that counsel “identified a small number of documents that could potentially contain sensitive or classified information interspersed throughout the records.” Jacob said Pence was “ready and willing to cooperate fully.”
Garland has appointed a second special counsel, Robert Hur, to oversee the investigation into the classified materials discovered at Biden’s properties.
The attorney general has not commented on the materials found at Pence’s property.
Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.