Democrats cave on timing of Robert Mueller testimony — but he will supposedly eventually answer questions

Former Vice President Mike Pence has tried to dodge a subpoena around the special counsel's investigation of the Jan. 6 attacks on Congress and the attempt to overthrow the election.

He's claiming that as the president of the Senate, he was operating in his role as a legislator, thus he should be safe from testifying due to Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution, the "speech and debate clause." It protects lawmakers who are working in the course of their jobs as an elected official. Legal analysts have said that it's a Hail Mary pass that isn't likely to work.

As former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — the latter of whom has not even formally declared his candidacy yet — increasingly duke it out for the 2024 presidential nomination, Republican candidates on the lower rungs are fighting to break through. And they are now gearing up to attack the two frontrunners themselves, POLITICO reported on Wednesday.

"Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence have begun more aggressively criticizing positions held by Trump, and now DeSantis, on a range of foreign and domestic issues," reported Natalie Allison and Adam Wren. "They have been aided, their respective teams believe, by DeSantis’ decision to leave little daylight between himself and Trump on key topics, from the war in Ukraine to entitlement reform."

The court rulings around Donald Trump's document scandal reveal that there was a crime committed, and that's the reason that the court agreed to breach attorney-client privilege. It's a point that Los Angele Times legal columnist Harry Litman said shouldn't be ignored.

"We are talking about the subpoena and the false declaration that is a crime in itself, very possibly," said Litman about the information in the classified documents scandal. "And the only reason you could find a crime-fraud exception here is because the actual communications between [Trump lawyer Evan] Corcoran and Trump are themselves evidence of a crime. Stop and think about that. What is the least it could be? This is one Corcoran is preparing to, well, actually tell Christina Bobb, 'sign this, it will be okay. We've done a diligent search and we have turned over everything.' That was a lie. That is a serious lie. And in sort of prosecutorial terms, a very clean one."