Special Counsel Jack Smith drags Mike Pence into the fray in the indictment endgame against Donald Trump
By the time Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith, the two main DOJ criminal probes into Donald Trump were already essentially complete. It was clear that Smith’s job was to simply assemble the probes into criminal cases, indict Trump, and put him on trial. So it’s not a surprise that Smith is already reaching his end game when it comes to his first indictment against Trump.
Smith has subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence in his January 6th criminal probe into Donald Trump, according to a report from the New York Times. We’re about to hear the words “executive privilege” repeated ad nauseum by the media and pundit class, as if this is merely the start of some lengthy legal battle to force Pence to testify. But let’s be real here. Pence desperately wants Trump taken down before 2024, so Pence can take his own shot at running. Of course Pence is going to cooperate; he’s just going to try to make it look like he fought against it, so that Trump’s base won’t blame Pence and spurn him in 2024 while Trump is rotting in prison.
It’s fairly obvious that it was Pence himself who leaked to the NY Times that the DOJ subpoenaed him, given that the resulting article is written almost entirely from his point of view. So what is Pence doing? By leaking that Smith subpoenaed him, he’s setting the narrative that his cooperation against Trump is involuntary. He’s letting everyone know that he’s been fending off Smith’s request for voluntary cooperation, and that now he has no choice but to cooperate because he’s being forced to. Whatever. Pence’s media games are just noise. The only thing that matters is that Pence wants Trump off the board, and “reluctantly” cooperating with this subpoena is an easy way to make it happen.
Even as Pence puts on a public show of acting like he’s trying to avoid cooperating, even though he’s obviously going to be cooperating, let’s not miss the real story. In these kinds of criminal probes, prosecutors move up the witness hierarchy, and the highest level witnesses are brought in to testify last. Pence is the highest level witness there is, and thus he’s likely the final witness that Jack Smith is subpoenaing in this case.
That means the DOJ’s criminal indictment against Donald Trump in the January 6th case is nearly complete. Bringing in Pence to testify against Trump is absolute endgame stuff. At this point the only remaining question is whether Smith will indict Trump now in the January 6th case and later in the separate espionage case, or whether Smith will wait until both cases are ready before bringing indictments in either of them. We’ll see.
In the meantime, brick by brick, it’s becoming more and more plainly obvious that Donald Trump is on the verge of being criminally indicted in three different jurisdictions. Jack Smith and the DOJ are now there. Fulton County DA Fani Willis announced two weeks ago that she’s there. And even Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is now leaking that he’s nearly there. Trump’s future is about to consist of criminal trials, convictions, prison sentences, and nothing more. But then that’s always been the only inevitable outcome, ever since the minute his goons first breached the Capitol.
