DFormer US Vice President Mike Pence testified before a grand jury on the January 6, 2021 violent storming of the US Capitol. For hours on Thursday, Pence was a witness in a federal court in the capital Washington and answered questions, as US media reported, citing informed circles. Nothing was known about the content of the survey. The investigation aims to clarify the role that Pence’s former boss, ex-President Donald Trump, played in the events of that day. The investigation is being led by a special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department.
The statement was preceded by a long legal battle. Pence has always refused investigators’ requests to testify in the case. On January 6, as vice president and automatically chairman of the Senate, he chaired the session in the Capitol that was supposed to officially confirm Biden’s election victory and which was interrupted by the attack. Pence invoked a safeguard clause on congressional debates to avoid questioning. Most recently, however, a judge ordered Pence to testify.
The January 6 attack investigation is among Trump’s many legal problems. Only on Wednesday did the US author Jean Carroll accuse him of sex crimes in the mid-1990s in a civil lawsuit she brought. Charges have been filed against Trump in another case involving hush money payments. Trump is also under investigation for his handling of classified government documents. In the state of Georgia, the prosecutor is investigating possible attempted election interference against Trump.
Trump himself has described law enforcement’s actions against him as politically motivated because he is running again as the Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 election.
