Ex-VP Chief Marc Short: ‘There Would Have Been A Massacre In The Capitol That Day’ If Rioters Had Gotten Closer to Pence

Former VP Chief of Staff Marc Short said if rioters had gotten any closer to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 “there would have been a massacre that day in the Capitol.”

Short — who served a brief stint as a CNN contributor between jobs in Trump’s White House —  was interviewed Monday night by ABC News’ Linsey Davis just days after he testified to a grand jury in Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s investigation into the attack on the Capitol.

During the interview, Short refused to disclose any information about his grand jury testimony beyond confirming its existence.

But Short did make a point of pushing back on what he says is a “mischaracterization” by the committee of the danger Pence and his Secret Service detail were in during the riot.

Last week, a witness described hearing members of Pence’s detail calling their families to say goodbye. But Short told Davis it was the rioters who were in danger:

LINSEY DAVIS: Last week, we heard that dramatic audio from the Secret Service detailing protecting former Vice President Pence. You were with him that day. Just give us a sense of your view on how the committee has presented evidence of the potential danger that the former vice president faced on that day. Would you say that they’ve painted an accurate picture?

MARC SHORT: Well, I think that having the Capitol ransacked the way that it was, I think did present liability and danger. And I think the Secret Service did a phenomenal job that day. I think that the bigger risk, and despite the way perhaps it was characterized in the hearings last week, candidly, is that if the mob had gotten closer to the vice president, I do think there would have been a massacre in the Capitol that day. I’m not so sure the Secret Service lives were those in danger, though? I think that likely there would have been a lot of other lives lost that day. And I think that there are a lot of challenges that are posed by Secret Service, who obviously did not anticipate the Capitol being breached, and it’s been reported, wanted to evacuate the vice president off the property, but he refused. And so that created extra challenges. And, you know, candidly, they just did an amazing job that day in protecting not just him, his family, but the staff that was around him as well.

LINSEY DAVIS: At what point, or how close to a point, did you ever come to feeling like your life was in jeopardy?

MARC SHORT: You know, I don’t know that I did. I really felt that being surrounded by very large Secret Service agents with weapons was a very comforting position to be in. And I think that that they, they had us in in in in control and they, they told us where to go.

Watch above via ABC News.

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