Special counsel Jack Smith personally attends grand jury questioning of ex-V.P. Mike Pence in Jan. 6 probe

Special counsel Jack Smith reportedly sat in on the climactic questioning of former Vice President Mike Pence before the grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Underlining the importance of Pence’s testimony, Smith was in the room last Thursday as prosecutors spent hours quizzing the ex-veep about former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, CNN reported.

Pence testified just hours after Trump’s bid to block his testimony was rejected by an appeals court.

Pence also challenged the subpoena on different grounds and succeeded in somewhat narrowing the scope of the questioning.

The grand jury session marks the first time a former veep has been ordered to testify against his ex-boss.

It’s also the first time Pence has spoken under oath about the Jan. 6 attack and Trump’s broader effort to bully him into joining the so-called Stop the Steal effort to stay in power after losing the election to President Biden.

Smith has been aggressively leading both the Jan. 6 probe and a separate investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that he took with him when he left the White House.

The documents case is considered more clear cut and more likely to result in an indictment sooner because Trump has admitted taking the documents and defying a subpoena for their return.

Neither probe is connected to Trump’s indictment in Manhattan on charges related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. They are also unrelated to the civil rape case against Trump filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, which is expected to go to the jury in coming days.