Pence's subpoena means 'criminal charges against Trump' for Jan. 6 'are close': legal expert

Former Vice President Mike Pence was subpoenaed last week by the Justice Department's special counsel, Jack Smith. According to legal experts, this is an indication that the special counsel is moving a lot faster than initially believed and that they're getting closer to Donald Trump.

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok warned last week that the Pence subpoena was the "last step" before they approached Donald Trump. A former federal prosecutor and Michigan Law School professor Barbara McQuade confirmed that idea to Newsweek.

"It signals that DOJ is seriously considering criminal charges against Trump for January 6," McQuade said."While it does not mean charges are a certainty, DOJ would not take such a significant step as subpoenaing a former VP if they thought the case was unlikely to result in charges. It also suggests that charges are close. Prosecutors typically question the top witnesses at the end of the investigation after they have learned as much as they can about the facts."

Trump has been trying to assert his "executive privilege," but such privilege belongs only to the existing executive and Trump was voted out in 2020. President Joe Biden has already stated that he absolves all executive privilege pertaining to the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the ongoing investigation into the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.

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In Jan. 2022, the Supreme Court refused to uphold Trump's demand to use executive privilege to stop any former White House staff or political appointees from testifying to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

"Biden will decline, I am sure, and if it goes to court, I think Trump will lose based on the court's earlier decision that Trump could not use executive privilege to block the National Archives from producing documents to the Jan 6 Committee," McQuade explained.

If Trump were to fight it to the Supreme Court again, he would likely lose and case law from Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal backs it up.

Read the full report at Newsweek.