We now know why Mike Pence had to testify in the Trump investigation on January 6

Pence called Boasberg’s decision the first to explain how a vice president can also enjoy the constitutional protection lawmakers enjoy from being compelled to testify even in criminal investigations.

Boasberg’s decision and reasoning had remained secret until now because grand jury rules generally prohibit anyone other than witnesses from discussing it. News outlets asked the judge to unseal them, and on Friday he granted their request. Boasberg said the repeated talks and disclosures by Pence and his attorneys removed the need for secrecy.

Boasberg’s 18-page opinion, released in March, reveals that the court granted Pence the privilege of avoiding testifying only in response to very specific questions. In particular, prosecutors reportedly wanted to question Pence about failed efforts by Trump and others to pressure him, Trump’s Justice Department and key swing state officials to void the election. This includes attempts by Trump lawyers to substitute allies for certified voters in some states that Joe Biden won. Boasberg does not seem to rule out such questions.

“The Court finds that, although the clause applies to the Vice President, it does not cover the vast majority of what the Special Counsel is seeking to ask of him. The Court will therefore largely dismiss the former Vice President’s motion Boasberg wrote in her decision.

The Constitution’s “speech or debate clause” was intended to protect elected members of Congress who conduct the legislative business of the people from coercion or intimidation by agents of the president – such as the threat of investigation or imprisonment – a basic separation of powers principle.

But in a key finding, Boasberg said the protection is limited to the official duties of a legislator, or steps taken to prepare for them, and does not extend to “communications urging a legislator to act unlawfully.”

Boasberg drew a line between Pence’s actions preparing for and delivering the speech on the ground on January 6, as well as advice from his internal staff about the scope of his authorities that day, who were protected, and Trump’s conversations or others encouraging Pence to stop the congressional congress. confirmation of the election results, which the Vice President’s own aides told him he was not legally authorized to do.

“The bottom line is that conversations urging Pence to reject voters on Jan. 6 are not shielded” from investigation, Boasberg said.

Pence sought to create a wider range of conversations, including those intended to “educate a legislator on an issue before him,” even incidentally.

But that “would cover any conversation with anyone with an opinion… This cannot be the rule,” Boasberg wrote. “Instead, the touchstone is whether those conversations were integral to the vice president’s performance of his official duties.”

Boasberg did not unseal his entire opinion, leaving redactions removing references to any specific testimony or the factual or strategic basis for prosecutors to seek it, as the investigation is ongoing. The Justice Department did not appeal a ruling by Boasberg earlier Friday in which he said he planned to unseal redacted documents.

“The core of what the press is asking here, and what the Court plans to release, is the legal discussion surrounding the dispute that Pence has already revealed,” Boasberg wrote in Friday’s decision.

Pence, who is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has positioned himself as a reluctant witness who has fought demands for his testimony. Still, he discussed the events in his book released late last year, “So Help Me God,” and in promotional interviews.

Top aides Marc Short and Greg Jacob, Pence’s chief of staff and chief counsel as vice president, spoke at the Justice Department and also appeared before the grand jury. Jacob told congressional investigators, for example, that Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, admitted to him that efforts to get Pence to block Biden’s Electoral College victory would violate voter count law and that Trump had been told that would be illegal.

Pence said Trump’s actions endangered everyone on Capitol Hill, including Pence’s family members trapped with him there, but publicly downplayed Trump’s criminal culpability.

“Well, I don’t know if it’s criminal to listen to bad advice from lawyers,” Pence told NBC’s “Meet the Press” last year. “The truth is, what the president was repeating was what he was hearing from this group of lawyers around him.”