Jack Smith

Special counsel Jack Smith's decision to issue subpoenas to former Vice President Mike Pence, ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other close advisers of Donald Trump is an indication that he has no qualms about engaging in "closed-door courtroom warfare" in his efforts to investigate the former president.

That is the opinion of two former U.S. Department of Justice officials, who commended Smith for using the full force of the tools available to him without political considerations.

Retired Judge Michael Luttig advised former Vice President Mike Pence against going along with former President Donald Trump's request to unilaterally refuse to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election -- and now he reportedly thinks that Pence's justification for fighting special counsel Jack Smith's subpoena will not hold up.

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent notes that Luttig this week shared an article about Pence's stated justification for fighting the subpoena by National Review legal analyst Andrew McCarthy, who argued that Pence "wasn’t functioning as a senator or a representative, but as an executive officer standing in as Senate president" on January 6th, 2021, which undermines his claim that the executive branch as represented by the DOJ cannot compel him to testify without violating the separation of powers.

Newly unearthed call logs show that Republican state legislators in Georgia were eager and willing to help former President Donald Trump toss out their state's 2020 election results.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that call logs unearthed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots show that Trump's campaign called more than 100 GOP state legislators to gauge their support for organizing a slate of fake presidential electors who would back Trump instead of President Joe Biden, who won the Peach State in 2020 by nearly 12,000 votes.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough condemned former Vice President Mike Pence for vowing to fight a subpoena to testify about his conversations with Donald Trump ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The former vice president called the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith "unprecedented and unconstitutional," but the "Morning Joe" host said Pence owed Americans a full accounting of Trump's effort to unlawfully overturn his election loss and remain in power.

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) raised suspiciously high totals for a recount of a congressional race he lost by more than 12 points.

Santos seized onto the recount fever that gripped the Republican Party after the 2020 election and set up the fundraising committee “Devolder Santos for Congress Recount” (DSCR) immediately after Election Day that raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars without ever actually conducting the tabulation, reported The Daily Beast.

CNN is reporting that special counsel Jack Smith's sprawling investigation into former President Donald Trump now includes eight "secret" court battles that the network says are aimed at uncovering "some of the most closely held details" about the former president's actions after the 2020 election.

The report notes that the eight sealed cases filed by Smith's team is an unusually high number, which it said reflects both the scope of the investigation and "Trump’s ultra-combative style in the face of investigations."

Former President Donald Trump is facing an unprecedented legal threat from all sides, explained New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman to a CNN panel.

This comes as special counsel Jack Smith pursues eight "secret court battles," according to the network's reporting, and as he issues a subpoena to Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Special counsel Jack Smith, the key figure leading the criminal investigation into January 6, has issued a subpoena against former President Donald Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, CNN reported on Wednesday.

"Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, and Meadows received the subpoena sometime in January, the source said. An attorney for Meadows declined to comment," reported CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

Former Vice President Mike Pence has a "moral obligation" to give testimony to special counsel Jack Smith about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, The Washington Post editorial board stated Wednesday.

"Mr. Pence performed his constitutional duty on Jan. 6, 2021, when he resisted pressure from President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election," wrote the board. "Now, he has a duty to tell investigators what he knows about the former president’s machinations to stay in power, which triggered an assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Some of them were chanting: 'Hang Mike Pence.'"

It was reported this week that special counsel Jack Smith is asking the judge in Donald Trump's documents case to allow the crime-fraud exception in some of the attorney-client privileges or a kind of umbrella privilege called "common-interest privilege."

It prompted former federal prosecutor Harry Litman to point out that the Trump lawyers are likely in trouble and they'll probably be forced to testify before the grand jury.

In a New York Times report Tuesday that special counsel Jack Smith is taking the approach to force allies of Donald Trump to testify before his investigations. In this case, it appears to be about the document scandal and not Jan. 6.

At issue is whether the "crime-fraud exception" could be used to force lawyer Evan Corcoran to testify about the ordeal.

After having claimed that he was immune, as an executive, from having to answer questions from the January 6 Committee, former Vice President Mike Pence is now trying the opposite strategy to avoid a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith and claiming, as President of the Senate, his actions at the time of the attack are shielded by the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution.

But this strategy is ultimately doomed to fail, argued former White House ethics czar and impeachment counsel Norm Eisen in conversation with CNN's Bianna Golodryga on Tuesday.