Washington, 28 April 2023 (dpa/MIA) - Former US vice president Mike Pence testified Thursday to the grand jury investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack in a major breakthrough for prosecutors probing ex-president Donald Trump.

Pence spent all day answering questions under oath for the first time about the former president’s effort to overturn the 2020 elections.

Just hours after an appeals court dismissed Trump’s long shot bid to block his testimony, Pence arrived at a Washington, DC federal courthouse around 8 am and left around 4:30 pm.

Grand juries work in secret, and there was no immediate word on what questions Pence was asked or how he answered.

Pence himself had agreed to abide by a separate ruling ordering him to testify about most but not all issues that special counsel Jack Smith may have planned to ask him about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Pence had never previously said under oath what he knows about Trump’s effort to overturn the election or what Trump may have told him behind closed doors.

Other witnesses have said Trump sought to bully Pence into backing his “Stop the Steal” campaign and hoped to get him to refuse to certify President Biden’s win at a January 6 congressional session.

Pence could shed light on Trump’s intent in pushing his election lies and delivering a fiery speech on January 6 when he urged his extremist supporters to “fight like hell” to keep him in power.

Pence was forced to flee for his life from rampaging attackers who stormed the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”

The vice president escaped to a secure area of the Capitol until security forces regained control of the compound hours later.

Pence, who is considering a run for president against Trump in 2024, has sought to avoid publicly criticizing Trump. He declined to appear before the congressional January 6 committee and fought a subpoena issued by the grand jury.

Trump separately launched a Hail Mary effort to get Congress involved in the investigation of his taking classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office.

His lawyers wrote to Republican lawmakers late Tuesday asking them to pass legislation that would yank the probe from the Department of Justice and Smith and hand it over to the intelligence community, which would have no power to criminally investigate it.

Smith is investigating Trump for mishandling the documents and obstructing its investigation, especially by defying a subpoena demanding return of the classified documents.

The measure has no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate let alone winning President Biden’s signature.

Neither the documents case nor the Capitol attack probe is related to the civil rape case against Trump filed by writer E. Jean Carroll in Manhattan Federal Court, or the Stormy Daniels hush money probe, for which Trump was recently indicted by a state grand jury in Manhattan.

Photo: MIA archive