When asked recently about whether he would testify before the Jan. 6 committee, Mike Pence’s response raised more questions than it gave answers: The former vice president stated, “It would be unprecedented in history for the vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill.”
As with so many things regarding the presidency, Washington set the template for presidents and vice presidents appearing before Congress. In his first year as president, Washington spoke to the Senate regarding Native American treaties. The willingness to testify reflected the first president’s respect for the checks and balances instituted by the Constitution. This was something Washington understood well, as he served as president of the Constitutional Convention. In Federalist 51, James Madison explained the Founders’ attitude toward the relationship between the executive branch and Congress: because of “human nature” such oversight was necessary “to control the abuses of government.”
Once Washington left office, his successors — regardless of party — maintained and protected this tradition at critical points in the nation’s history.
Maybe most notably, amid the Civil War, arguably America’s greatest crisis, Abraham Lincoln testified before the House Judiciary Committee concerning the case of a journalist leaking his December 1861 message to Congress. Lincoln clarified that members of his family, specifically first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, were acquainted with the journalist, but they had no involvement with the leak. The committee had detained the journalist while it waited to hear from Lincoln, and he recognized both that Congress was entitled to his testimony, and how much weight it would have with congressional investigators.
The practice of presidents testifying continued into the 20th century, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans held the White House.
Nothing made this clearer than the behavior of the three men who ran against each other in the 1912 presidential election. A month before the election, when he was running for president as the Bull Moose Party candidate, former president Theodore Roosevelt testified before Congress for the second time. This time his testimony concerned campaign expenditures, and he appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. President William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s successor and a man who disagreed with him on many things, testified more than any other president after his tenure because of his position as co-chair of the World War I National War Labor Board and later as chief justice of the United States.. And Woodrow Wilson, the candidate who bested both Roosevelt and Taft in 1912, resurrected Washington’s practice of going before Congress over foreign policy matters, when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1919 to make his case in support of the United States joining the League of Nations.
Each of these presidents or former presidents volunteered to testify, recognizing the value of their testimony to Congress’ oversight function and its ability to make good policy.
Vice presidents have also testified and cooperated with congressional investigations. During the scandal-ridden years of Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, for example, Schuyler Colfax, his first-term vice president, testified voluntarily before the House Select Committee examining the Credit Mobilier scandal in 1873. Notably Spiro Agnew, Richard M. Nixon’s first vice president, avoided being “summoned,” to use Pence’s term, by admitting to tax evasion and resigning in 1973. Nevertheless, Congress compelled this action, because Agnew understood that otherwise he would face congressional inquisitors and the possibility of impeachment.
Maybe the most well-remembered testimony offered by a president or vice president was also connected with Nixon’s scandal-tarred administration. In 1974, President Gerald Ford — a former House minority leader — voluntarily returned to the House to testify on his decision to pardon Nixon. Ford saw the pardon as the only way to end the national crisis of Watergate that threatened the stability of American government. But he also understood that many Americans wondered if he had cut some sort of deal with Nixon. Therefore, Ford understood that testifying on the record was the best way to clear the air. While he recognized the uniqueness of the crisis and the moment, Ford was also relying on long-standing precedent.
And while Pence chose to elide this history, many still remember it. When asked about Pence’s comments, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee and the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, who had been Ford’s chief of staff — clarified that “there is actually precedent when you have a national crisis for presidents, vice presidents to testify,” citing her father’s former boss.
This history makes clear that while it hasn’t happened in recent years, there is a long history of both current and former presidents and vice presidents appearing before congressional committees to testify on important matters. It happened in moments of crisis, during fierce policy debates and even when Congress was investigating executive branch malfeasance.
If Pence refuses to testify, it won’t be because he’s adhering to historical precedent. It will instead reflect political calculations about an investigation that his party loathes. Pence was lauded on Jan. 6, 2021, for adhering to constitutional and legal traditions by resisting enormous pressure and certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. But history is clear: For Pence to continue to adhere to these traditions, he will need to testify about the events of that day.
