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It’s unlikely former Vice President Mike Pence will testify before the Jan. 6 committee, both because he is focused on the future rather than “relitigating the past” and because it would set a “terrible precedent,” a former top aide said.
Marc Short told Margaret Brennan on Sunday that his former boss isn’t “dragging out a decision” about whether to testify before the House panel investigating the attack on the Capitol. Rather, his focus is on delivering big wins for Republicans in this year’s midterm election cycle.
“I think we all lived it,” Short said. “And I don’t think he’s waiting with bated breath and watching these hearings to the same extent that perhaps some inside the beltway are.”
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Short and others who worked for Pence have spent hours speaking with the committee, he said, and their testimony told the story of what the vice president and his team experienced that day.
Besides feeling that they have given the Jan. 6 committee ample evidence about what transpired, from their point of view, Short said he was concerned about the precedent Pence appearing before the committee would set.
“I think it would be incredibly unprecedented,” Short said. “I think conversations between the president and the vice president, that there is a separation of powers that should be respected. And let’s keep in mind that there is currently a former vice president who occupies the oval office. Do you want Congress being able to drag up former vice presidents for certain subpoenas or for certain testimony? I think that would create a terrible precedent.”
Before rioters descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, members of former President Donald Trump’s staff played key roles in stoking unfounded claims about election fraud. Short said Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff at the time, was trying to play both sides of the fence when it came to those conspiracy theories.
Meadows told Short he was trying to get Trump to concede that he lost the election, Short said. However, Meadows was also “bringing lots of other people into the White House who were feeding the president different conspiracy theories,” Short said.
“I think Mark was telling different audiences all sorts of different stories.” Short said.
“I believe the president was very poorly served by the team that he had around him,” Short continued. “And I think that they fed him many conspiracy theories about the events that conspired on election day and the following days.”
One of the conspiracy theories that played out on Jan. 6 was an effort by several states to pass off fake electors to cast electoral college votes for Trump rather than then-candidate Joe Biden.
During a Jan. 6 committee hearing last week, members revealed text messages between the chief of staff for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and a staffer for Pence about sending fake electors to the vice president.
Short said he had “no reason to believe” that Johnson was directly involved in the effort.
Short also played down the concerns about the fake elector plan, saying that, after speaking with the parliamentarian, he learned something similar happens “every cycle.”
“Members send in separate fake sets of electors, every time, every four years,” Short said. “But, they come into the archives of the parliamentarian, and they dismiss them. If they’re not certified, it’s kind of meaningless.”
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Short hedged when Brennan asked him if what Johnson’s staff did was “kosher,” but he said that Pence’s staff said they weren’t interested in any set of electors that hadn’t been certified by Wisconsin.
“I think it was clear at that point of where we were in this that there were other electors that were being submitted,” short said. “So I can’t say that it was necessarily shocking at that stage of events.”
