ex-president it all but ensures that special counsel jack smith will hear from the key witness who none of the other investigations into the trump cou plot not the fulton county d.a. has ever heard from under oath we re, of course, talking about mike pence a ruling handed down wednesday night by a federal appeals court rejects an emergency request by trump to block mike pence s testimony. new york times reports this, quote, the 11th hour ruling by the u.s. court of appeals for the district of colombia paves the way for mr. pence to appear before the federal grand jury as early as this week the ex-president has a few legal options left including an appeal to the supreme court but as nbc news reports, quote, in previous instances, where appeals sent senior aides must testify, his legal team has opted no the to fight the decision further and those witnesses have quickly appeared before the grand jury and trump s argument that executive privilege prevents pence or any of his ai
Talk to them this investigation represents a graver threat to donald trump. they don t seem to have thrown up as many hurdles they initially went to court to try to stop it. he has a new lawyer in emmitt flood. making people never talk. essentially he is one of the reasons that mueller runs into a brick wall when he was in the white house to the question here, pence did not just go in immediately after he was subpoenaed for this there were a lengthy back and forth. he did go to court to try and stop this. that ultimately failed he had to go in and testify. there was an effort on pence s behalf to essentially not jump at first sight to do this. my only point was explain that to the qanon shaman
You want to hear it through pence s eyes, before you get there. there are valuable things that could come from mike pence i might be tempted to start, if i had the opportunity to examine him, by saying, we have all heard this conversation that trump had with georgia s secretary of state brad raffensperger where he pleaded with him i just need you to help me mind the 11,779 votes i m missing the question for pence is, did trump have a similar conversation with you? did he beg you to help him get across the finish line, which would give prosecutors additional evidence that trump knew he had lost but was trying to scheme to stay in control i think ben is very clear when he says this is close to the end. whether it s the absolute end, i m not sure i would go that far. there are things you have to tie down before you indict you have to be ready to turn over your discovery. that s the boring procedural
The office of legal counsel and justice department said it, since the clinton administration you can t prosecute a sitting president. but jack smith, it s like he s not a president anymore he s an ex-president i can go full bore seems like that s what s happening. are there any questions you think will ever be answered or light shed on, look at the speed with which jack smith brought these cases and they have been resolved there s no evidence merrick garland sought with any alacrity any of these cases before jack smith arrives. it raises a larger question here as we get closer to 2024, which is could this have started earlier? and if it didn t start earlier, why didn t it start earlier? it s sort of one of the great unknowns of where we are today we know that the justice department s january 6th investigation started at sort of
Everything the insurrectionists were doing that day, do we have a special counsel? do we have an investigation into trump and his inner circle do we have mike pence before a special grand jury today you know, it s such an interesting question, nicolle, because without cassidy hutchinson, i think one thing we don t have is a january 6th committee in front of the house that has this tremendous public appeal and perhaps it s that house committee investigation that jump starts doj. i m, you know, one of those prosecutors that mike is talking about. i was on record early. preet and i discussed on our podcast, the fact that doj wasn t investigating the first year merrick garland was on board. and the way you know that there s a prosecution under way and an investigation under way is exactly what we ve seen in the last year we ve seen witnesses subpoenaed to the grand jury and they protest. they try to get out of testifying, and that s how these sorts of investigations become