Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is in a heap of legal trouble. On Monday, Meadows surprised observers by choosing to testify in Atlanta as part of a bid to get his Georgia election fraud case moved to a federal court. CNN had on Marc Short, the onetime chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, to discuss.
Asked about Meadows’ claims that he was serving entirely in a federal capacity in relation to this fraud case, Short joked that while it is true that anyone working under Donald Trump doesn’t have a “normal” job description, Meadows’ defense has some holes in it. Like, a lot of holes:
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 was doing. But I do think one challenge for him is to say this was all in my official capacity. If that was true, then why was he circumventing all of the White House counsel's advice. Why wasn't Pat Cipollone involved? … Why wasn’t DOJ involved? Instead, Mark recruited outside lawyers who he wanted to listen to. And so I think that undercuts the notion that this is all part of “my federal responsibility” if I'm not getting counsel from the people hired into your office to serve the White House in that role.
Short followed that up by contradicting Meadows’ assertion that Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was actually an attempt to grease the wheels on a smooth transfer of power to Joe Biden. Short said that while Pence and his staff were not involved at all in Trump’s Georgia election shenanigans, his own opinion lined up with most everybody else’s.
“I think the actions that were taken were wrong. I don't think there was evidence of fraud or that the Georgia election was stolen,” Short said. “And so, to call on Raffensperger to find 11,000 votes, I think is going to be a pretty challenging defense for them.”
Asked again about Meadows’ claim, Short put the nail into the coffin, saying, “I think that there was plenty of evidence of the White House asking that we halt transition efforts, and so that would, I think, also run counter to that defense.”
Short’s answer is 100% “counter to that defense.”