According to CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, the very fact that special counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence as part of his investigation into Donald Trump's actions surrounding Jan. 6 should be of great concern to the former president.
As CNN had previously reported, "Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony," however that went nowhere, hence the Smith subpoena.
Speaking with host Jim Sciutto, Eisen said Pence's lawyers will likely attempt to invoke executive privilege to get out of talking about the former veep's interactions with Trump during their four years together, but that Pence's book -- and what he wrote in it -- will blow that defense out of the water.
"Norm, it is hard to imagine circumstances of this at any other time, but you have a special counsel subpoenaing someone who is considering a run again, and a vice president who may soon announce he is running again for the same office, and how does the special counsel and the Justice Department navigate that incredibly sensitive territory?" host Sciutto asked.
"Jim, I think that as a matter of prosecutorial ethics, they can't ignore it, the fundamental principle, and [Attorney General] Merrick Garland has said this again and again, and Jack Smith's reputation is known for this principle that no person is above the law in the United States of America," Eisen explained.
"So they need to take the political considerations of the primary calendar out of it, and they need to look at the facts, and they need to look at the evidence -- that is why Pence is being brought before the grand jury -- and then at the law," he continued. "I believe that the facts and the law strongly make a case for the liability of Donald Trump. I don't think that executive privilege will bar Mike Pence's testimony here, including because he has written about the incidents in his book, and the former president is at great peril of federal charges because of this indication."
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