Trump calls Pence a ‘very honorable man’ after Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoena

EXCLUSIVE: Former President Trump called former Vice President Pence a “very honorable man” after Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed Pence as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and into Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office.

Pence was subpoenaed by Smith after months of negotiations between Pence’s legal team and federal prosecutors.

“Mike Pence is an honorable man,” Trump told Fox News Digital on Friday in an exclusive interview, but he laid out a number of areas he hopes Smith will consider and look into as part of his investigation.

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“Are they going to look for the people that spied on my campaign?” Trump asked, referring to the FBI’s original investigation into whether Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence pose together on a stage.  (Getty Images)

That investigation was taken over by then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2017. After nearly two years, the investigation yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Special Counsel John Durham has been investigating the origins of that probe since 2019. 

“Are they going to look at Special Agent Charles McGonigal who was in charge of the Russia probe and just arrested for taking large amounts of money from Russia?” Trump asked, referring to McGonigal, who was recently indicted on charges of money laundering and other counts stemming from his “collusion” with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

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McGonigal, who was a former special agent in charge of the New York FBI Counterintelligence Division, was charged for working on behalf of and taking money from Deripaska, who has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 23: Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office, leaves Manhattan Federal Court on January 23, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Deripaska was the same Russian oligarch who was working with Christopher Steele — the author of the infamous anti-Trump dossier that served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

“Are they going to look into the FBI’s activities with Twitter and Facebook trying to rig the election?” Trump asked. “Are they going to look at the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop from hell, which would have made, according to pollsters, a 17-point difference in the election?” Trump added: “It was suppressed by the FBI in collusion with Twitter and with Facebook.”

Trump was referring to ways in which Big Tech suppressed stories related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings, based on emails and records contained in his now-infamous laptop, ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

At the time, the Biden campaign, Democrats, Biden allies and even dozens of former national security officials cast the laptop and stories about Hunter Biden’s business dealings as part of a Russian disinformation campaign to influence the 2020 election.

At the time, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Wray and other top sitting intelligence community officials said that the laptop was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign, maintaining there was “no intelligence that supports that” theory.

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WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 19: Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an event to promote his new book at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank on October 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. During his remarks, Pence talked about his “freedom agenda” and warned against “unmoored populism.”  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Fox News first reported that the laptop had been subpoenaed by the FBI in connection with an existing money laundering investigation.

Hunter Biden, weeks after the 2020 election, later announced he was under federal investigation for his “tax affairs.” Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2018. The probe was predicated, in part, by suspicious activity reports (SARs) regarding suspicious foreign transactions. Those SARs, according to sources familiar with the investigation, involved funds from “China and other foreign nations.

GOP-led committees in the House of Representatives are currently investigating Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s business dealings and Big Tech’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story. “When we had an honest press, the laptop from hell would have been the biggest story and everyone would have wanted it for a Pulitzer Prize,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “Today, the fake news media didn’t want to touch it and the Pulitzer Prize no longer means anything.”

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As for the former vice president, it is unclear what prosecutors will seek from him, or whether Pence will invoke executive privilege.

In November, after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel, Trump told Fox News Digital that he “won’t partake” in the investigation against him, calling it “the worst politicization of justice in our country.”

“I have been going through this for six years — for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore,” Trump told Fox News Digital Friday. “And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.”

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“I have been proven innocent for six years on everything — from fake impeachments to [former special counsel Robert] Mueller who found no collusion, and now I have to do it more?” Trump said. “It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political.”