Former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff cast doubt on Mark Meadows’ assertion Monday that he was acting in his official capacity in his efforts to try to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election.
Marc Short, during an appearance on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” shot holes in the claims Meadows was making that are considered pivotal in his effort to move his Fulton County indictment to federal court.
Short said that although the argument his counterpart in the Oval Office made that Meadows was acting “at the behest” of the former president may have merit, the argument that he was acting in an official capacity in connection with the Georgia allegations falls flat.
"I’m not sure that the job description for Donald Trump’s chief of staff ever probably fit into the normal chief of staff’s role. But I think that it's probably true that Mark was acting at the behest of the president, and I think he does deserve the benefit of the doubt there as far as what he's doing," Short said.
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“But I do think one challenge for him is to say this is all my official capacity. If that was true, then why was he circumventing all the White House counsel's advice? Why wasn’t Pat Cipollone involved? ... Why wasn't DOJ involved?" he continued.
“Instead, Mark recruited outside lawyers [to] whom he wanted to listen," Short explained. "And so I think that undercuts the notion that ‘this was all part of my federal responsibility.’ Come back and counsel from the people hired into your office to serve the White House in that role.”
Short said the efforts to overturn Georgia’s election were misguided.
“I think the actions that were taken were wrong I don't think there's evidence that there was fraud or that the Georgia election was stolen and so to call on Raffensperger to find 11,000 votes, I think is gonna be a pretty challenging defense for them,” he closed.
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