January 6: Grand jury testimony of Pence aides brings Justice Department probe

CNN
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The move by the Justice Department to bring two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence in front of a federal grand jury is the most aggressive public step taken yet by prosecutors investigating the plots to subvert the 2020 election.

It signals that the Department’s probe has reached inside former President Donald Trump’s White House and that investigators are looking at conduct directly related to Trump’s and his closest allies’ efforts to overturn his election defeat.

Former Pence chief of staff Marc Short testified in front of a grand jury in DC on Friday, CNN has confirmed. Fellow Pence aide Greg Jacob testified in recent weeks as well, CNN has learned from a source close to the investigation.

The questions to Jacob and Short included a focus on the fake elector scheme and the role of Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, the source said.

Short and Jacob both were present in key meetings in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection that were part of a pressure campaign to convince Pence to disrupt Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral win.

Jacob, a former legal adviser to Pence, has participated in the House January 6 select committee investigation, even testifying publicly at a hearing last month. (He has not responded to CNN’s inquiries about reports of his grand jury testimony.)

Short confirmed to CNN’s Erin Burnett Monday night he complied with a grand jury subpoena but declined to discuss any details about his appearance. Short previously sat for a deposition in the House investigation.

Short’s and Jacob’s accounts were among the evidence that a federal judge in California cited in concluding that Trump and his allies may have been planning a crime in their plot to disrupt the transfer of presidential power.

How to approach Trump in the January 6 investigation has been a delicate question for the Justice Department. The department has faced immense pressure from lawmakers, former prosecutors and others to focus on the ringleaders of the 2020 election reversal gambits. But any investigation of a former president raises a host of highly sensitive and potentially explosive political and legal questions.

That Pence’s inner circle is now being compelled to cooperate in the probe suggests that at least some of those obstacles have been cleared.

Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland was visibly frustrated when a reporter grilled him about the possibility that the former president would be charged, as the former judge repeated vague assertions that, “No person is above the law in this country.”

In an interview with Lester Holt on “NBC Nightly News” on Tuesday, Garland said DOJ would look at any interference on the “lawful transfer of power.”

“I will say again that we will hold accountable anyone who is criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the legitimate, lawful transfer of power from one administration…