Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel in charge of overseeing multiple Department of Justice investigations into Donald Trump.
The move comes after months of negotiations between lawyers for Mr Trump’s former vice president and special counsel Jack Smith, according to multiple reports.
It is not clear exactly what information Mr Smith is seeking through the subpoena, which was reported by ABC News and The New York Times.
Mr Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, was appointed as special counsel in November and is managing the federal investigations into Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left the White House. He is also overseeing the probe into efforts by Mr Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.
If his office seeks and obtains indictments against Mr Trump, it would be the first time an ex-president — one who is a declared candidate in the next presidential election — will face criminal charges. But Mr Trump would not be the first public figure who Mr Smith has put in the dock.
From 2010 to 2015, he oversaw anti-corruption prosecutions against multiple US politicians in his role as the head of the Department of Justice public integrity section.
One of those cases was against former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell, a Republican against whom he secured a conviction on bribery charges, though the case was later thrown out by the US Supreme Court.
He also won a conviction of former GOP Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona, who received a sentence of three years in prison before being pardoned by Mr Trump.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Mr Smith also served in prosecutorial roles in US Attorney offices in the Middle District of Tennessee and the Eastern District of New York.
He had been serving in The Hague as a “specialist prosecutor” overseeing prosecutions for war crimes in Kosovo since 2018.
He also served as a coordinator of investigations for the prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court from 2008 to 2010, where he worked on cases against foreign government officials and members of militias accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
