An aide to former Vice President Mike Pence described former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as the “ringleader” with much of the events that took place on Jan. 6, 2021.
Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, said Meadows was “central” in efforts to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6. Though Meadows was not charged in the Justice Department’s federal case, he was charged alongside former President Trump with racketeering and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer in the Fulton County, Ga., election case.
“Regarding Mark, look, I don’t think any of us relish witnessing what’s happening to any of these people that we worked with,” Short, who now leads Pence’s political advocacy group, told host Abby Phillip on “CNN Primetime” on Tuesday.
“I think that in your last panel, I think it was it’s fair to say that Mark was the ringleader of much the events that happened around Jan. 6, he was somebody who was — the President sought to find additional attorneys who gave advice different than White House counsel, and it was very central to the events that happen on that day,” he added.
Meadows is trying to move his Georgia case to federal court, arguing that he is immune because the allegations against him were part of his job in the White House.
Short reiterated that Pence believed that he did not have the power in his capacity as vice president to interfere with the counting of the votes. The former vice president has maintained that argument in a break from former President Trump, who said the opposite.
“And I think what’s often missed in the coverage is the weeks leading up that, in which the vice president made it clear that he did not think that there was some magical authority vested upon a vice president of the United States had never been used in 250 years of our republic that allowed him to overturn the election results,” Short said.
“So there had been a lot of conversations leading up to this, and Mark was central to pulling together many of those who were, I think, whispering falsehoods into the president’s ear,” he added.