President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence hold a news conference, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Washington D.C., March 22, 2020.
Yuri Gripas | Reuters
Attorneys for former President Donald Trump are trying to block ex-Vice President Mike Pence from testifying in a special counsel investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, NBC News reported Monday.
The latest move in the sealed court proceedings came less than a week after Pence said he would not fight a judge’s order for his testimony before the federal grand jury involved in the probe.
Trump’s legal team has appealed that order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., NBC reported, citing a source familiar with the litigation. The notice to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is currently under seal.
The reported appeal also followed Trump’s historic indictment and arrest in a separate case being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records during his arraignment in Manhattan on Tuesday.
As Pence prepares to comply with the subpoena in the investigation targeting his former boss, he is considering launching a 2024 presidential campaign that would put him in direct competition with Trump, the current Republican front-runner.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, in a statement to CNBC accused the Department of Justice of “attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.”
The spokesman, who also derided special counsel Jack Smith’s probe as a “witch hunt,” said those standards “protect a President’s ability to confer with his Vice President on matters of the security of the United States.” He also asserted that the probe was intended to influence Trump’s standing in the 2024 election.
Attorneys for Trump and spokespeople for Pence and…
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