There is a potential breakthrough
in the Justice
Department's criminal probe
of the January six insurrection.
Sources are telling
CNN that the DOJ is seeking
testimony from former Vice President
Mike Pence
and that Pence is open
to some level of cooperation.
CNN senior justice correspondent
Evan Perez is on the story for us.
Evan, so what indications do we have
that Pence could comply
with this request?
Well, Alex, I think what you are hearing
certainly from people
around the former vice president is that,
first of all,
this is a criminal investigation.
And so he can't just reject out of hand
a request from the prosecutors,
but they do,
I think, want to reach some kind
of accommodation
whereby, you know, they can negotiate a
you know, for him to to appear
and provide some kind of interview.
That would be the ideal way whereby they
perhaps limit the questions that he can
that he can answer.
You know, of course,
the former vice president
had just published a book
in which he described
a lot of his interactions
with the former president
around this key period
right after the election
up to January six and thereafter.
And you can bet that that's
what the Justice Department's
to talk about.
But he did reject out of hand testifying
in front of the January
six congressional committee.
Let's listen to him
speaking about that recently. Yeah,
Congress has no right to my testimony.
The very notion of a committee
on Congress
in Congress
summoning a vice president
to speak about deliberate means
that took place at the White House,
I think would violate the separation
of powers.
So that was from our CNN town hall
just a week ago.
So, Evan,
why is he considering this DOJ
request while rejecting Congress?
Well, unlike the former president
who has gone to court trying to claim
all kinds of separation powers issues
in a Justice Department
criminal investigation,
I think the former vice president
realizes and understands
that that is not an excuse
that he can use here. Right.
This is the Justice Department.
It is the same branch of government
in which he served.
And so he doesn't really have that
that way to avoid this.
I think also it's been clear
that the former vice president
has you know, certainly he
he had the option of trying to raise,
you know, his
executive privilege as vice president.
And he hasn't done that yet.
And so I think what you might expect is
they'll figure out a way
to arrange for him to answer
perhaps some questions
that he's already
kind of gone over in his book.
And what we're told, Alex,
is that when he wrote the book
and before he published a book,
they envisioned that
the Justice Department
was going to come back knocking. Yeah.
They knew this was coming.
They knew it. Evan Perez, stay with us.
I want to bring in our senior
legal analyst, Preet Bharara.
Preet,
thank you so much
for joining us this evening.
I want to ask you about how Pence
why Pence might be inclined to comply
with this criminal investigation,
because there's also the chance
that former
President Trump tries to to intervene.
So so what kind of legal
fight could we see ahead?
Well, I think further to what Evans said
the vice
president, former vice president,
understands that a potential subpoena,
I don't think has been subpoenaed yet,
but a potential grand jury subpoena
in connection
with a criminal investigation
and prosecution
is quite different
and a lot more powerful
than a congressional subpoena.
And that's for a couple of reasons. One.
There's a better enforcement mechanism
and there's more precedent
for that in the courts.
To the congressional committee,
the January 6th committee is going away
in a few weeks
because Republicans won back the House.
The Department of Justice
and this open grand jury investigation
is not going away.
In fact, in some ways, it's
just that it's start,
as we've seen, the new special
special counsel appointed Jack Smith
just in the last number of days.
And I think also he probably understands
that the arguments being made in favor
of getting his testimony
in some future litigation
that you mentioned
are pretty powerful
in the part of the Justice Department
in connection with the January six
committee investigation.
But two high level staffers
depend have already testified
his chief counsel, his chief of staff.
But the Justice Department
that may have been enough
for the committee
be able
to put together a report
because they can put together a report
based on hearsay and other evidence.
If you're going to bring
a criminal prosecution
against Donald Trump
or someone else
you need the direct testimony
of the vice president,
both because of hearsay concerns
and also because it's
the most powerful
and notable and probative evidence.
And Evan,
on that point
that we had that the Justice Department
has heard
from these top Pence
deputies, including
chief of staff, former chief of staff
Marc Short.
Does that provide any clues
as to how the Justice Department may
fare in trying to get answers from Pence?
Oh, yes, it does.
I mean, look, for example,
we know that Mark Penn,
I'm sorry, Marc Short
and Greg Jacob
both went in to the grand jury.
They declined certain questions
because the former president
was asserting executive privilege.
By the way,
you know, the vice president
also there's
a vice presidential privilege.
And as far as we know,
the vice president,
the former vice president
never asserted that.
So it was only Donald Trump
that was trying to shield
some of these things from the grand jury.
We know that the Justice Department went
in to the court
and asked a judge to get past those those
the privilege concerns.
And then they went all the way up to the
the appeals court and they won.
So they were able to
break through Trump's claims of privilege
because, of course,
this is a criminal investigation.
And clearly,
the courts believed that
this was the right way to do this.
So you can bet that,
you know,
it does give you a bit of a roadmap
of where
we expect
the vice president is going to be able to
to go with his testimony.
So game this out for us.
We just played
that clip of the former vice
president saying that
the select committee
has no right to his testimony.
As Evans mentioned,
he revealed some key details
in this new book that he just published.
So how do you think this is
ultimately going to play out?
I'm actually
hopeful
that there's going to be a negotiated
understanding here.
There's
both sides
have something at risk here, right.
If you get the court
involved in connection with a fight
over subpoena,
depending on the panel
and depending on the,
you know, the time frame,
you could take a long time
to get Vice President Pence's testimony
and he might be ordered
to give more testimony than you might
otherwise want to give.
And he's kind of reluctant.
By the same token, it's possible
that the Justice Department,
if they went forward with the court
battle, might not get everything
it wants.
And so often in these cases,
when you have a former official like this
who has some claims
to executive privilege,
but also has made some are
given some grist to people
who say he waived those claims
because he wrote a book about it,
There's an ability for each side
to come out ahead
and look a little bit
better than they would have
otherwise looked.
But if they just go and fight. So.
So I think and hope
this is a negotiated thing
that happens relatively soon.
And, Evan, do you think that
is what's going to happen
or what does this tell us
about the timeline,
the fact that now
they're talking about speaking
with Mike Pence
they're clearly moving up,
that they know the ladder within
the Pence office.
And at the same time,
we have this newly appointed
special counsel
who's who's overseeing
those investigations.
Well, yeah.
So we
we know that
that the outreach
from the Justice
Department happened before
Jack Smith was
it was was appointed in the recent weeks.
And so look,
I do think that there is a way for that
that kind of negotiation
to happen to what I just described
is exactly what I understand.
The sides are looking to try to
to try to reach.
The one wildcard here,
of course, is the former
president who
has gone to court repeatedly
to try to block testimony.
I'm sure he's
going to try to do that again.
But the hopeful side here,
if you
the Justice Department,
is that the courts here in D.C.,
the appeals court,
have shown
pretty quickly
that they can handle these things
and they can work through them
very, very, you know, with relative ease.
It's not exactly quick,
but it's quicker than a lot of people.
I think fear.
And what it tells us is that, look,
I think we might be dealing with this
certainly
going into early into the spring
but it doesn't mean
that it's going to take forever.
I think there is a quicker timeline
than than than
a lot of people are fearing.
Well, it's
going to be fascinating to watch.
Preet Bharara, Evan Perez,
we have to leave it there.
Thank you so much.
And happy Thanksgiving to you, too.