Mike Pence will testify against Donald Trump.

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On Tuesday, a federal district court in Washington ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s attempt to revoke the 2020 presidential election. The order is another judicial loss for Trump, though Pence can claim a win in a narrow decision about questions he can avoid answering.

That narrow win was meaningless, though, for Trump, the actual target of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.

While the order itself remains sealed, through the report, the court specified that Pence must testify about any conversations he had with Trump involving “wrongdoing” as the then-president sought to overturn his defeat. electorally before Jan. 6. Pence’s pyrrhic victory on Tuesday was that he was allowed to answer questions about his role on Jan. 6 as the official presiding over Congressional certification for the 2020 presidential election.

You can be sure that events involving Pence in that role are not a priority for Jack Smith. Although litigation may arise in the future over whether Pence will have to answer questions, for example, about Republican Senator Ron Johnson’s attempt to deliver a list of fake electors from Wisconsin that day, you can be sure Smith has a mountain of evidence on that. deceptive technique, and Johnson was not in Smith’s cross-hairs.

What Smith didn’t have were the words Trump said to Pence when they were alone, evidence that would almost certainly convey a criminal state of mind. That is almost always the most difficult element to prove in white collar crimes. Pence was in the room where those words happened.

While the subject of any such talks will center on Pence’s expected Congressional role on January 6, the order reportedly says that Pence must testify if Trump’s words involve “any illegal action in part of Trump.” That’s all that really matters here.

Need proof that Pence and Trump lost? Watch who appealed. That’s what losing parties do. Before the order, Pence had promised to do so. He probably won’t have much luck.

Recall that Pence refused to testify before the committee on January 6. He said that doing so would set “a terrible precedent.” To obtain his testimony, the committee had to go to court to challenge Pence’s position and expose the legal vacuity of his claim. Under the committee’s mandate deadline that ends this past January with a new Congress, it has no time.

Not so in a criminal investigation run by a prosecutor serious about building his case about the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack.

Tuesday’s decision proves that the federal courts remain committed to the rule of law and to speeding up the criminal investigations of Trump. Last week, in upholding the district court’s March 17 order that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified to, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit moved faster than Hans Solo’s Millennium Falcon. In Pence’s case, it appears that the district court took just five days from hearing arguments to ruling, further evidence of a special counsel and the courts being rushed.

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It took too long for the Justice Department to aggressively move this investigation to this point. But here’s the irony for Trump. He thought announcing his 2024 presidential bid early would give him a good narrative—“my indictment is nothing but politics because I’m running for president!” However, the cost of his early announcement was the appointment of Smith as special counsel, and orders like Tuesday’s.

To be sure, Pence’s decision set a precedent that the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause applies to a vice president on a day when he is acting as the presiding officer in a joint session of congress that certifies a presidential election. But that precedent isn’t about to open a floodgate of future litigation involving vice-presidents’ claims of immunity from being required to testify about their role in the certification of an election.

It took Trump to get us here after 235 years of constitutional history. Now, however, Smith’s aggressive investigation and accelerated pace indicate the possibility that Trump will be charged well before the 2024 campaign heats up. Justice about January 6 has been delayed, but the special counsel has dominoes falling. in place to ensure that a federal criminal courtroom date for Donald Trump is not denied.

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