- Marc Short said there would've been a "massacre" if rioters had gotten closer to Pence on January 6.
- In an ABC interview, Short said he had spoken with a federal grand jury investigating the riot.
Marc Short, a former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said during a Monday interview that he believed there would have been a "massacre" on January 6, 2021, if the rioters who breached the US Capitol that day had gotten closer to the vice president, according to ABC News.
Short — who was with Pence when rioters broke into the Capitol complex and interrupted the counting of electoral votes — said he testified before a grand jury investigating the January 6 riot.
"I think that having the Capitol ransacked the way that it was, I think, did present liability and danger," he told ABC News. "And I think the Secret Service did a phenomenal job that day."
He added: "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."
During a separate CNN interview on Monday, Short said he complied with his subpoena from the federal grand jury but did not speak further on the matter.
"Under advice of counsel, I really can't say much more than that," he told Erin Burnett, the host.
Short also testified before the House committee investigating the January 6 riot.
At one of the panel's hearings last month, he said on video that Pence informed President Donald Trump "many times" that he was not on board with invalidating the election results, whether it be excluding electors or proclaiming that the GOP ticket had truly won the election.
For weeks before the Electoral College certification, Trump had been prodding Pence to acquiesce to his demands of stopping then-President-elect Joe Biden from being formally certified as the presidential victor, pointing to debunked allegations of voter fraud in several key states.
Pence refused to go along with the plot, much to the frustration of Trump.
The Department of Justice has been conducting an investigation into January 6, with Attorney General Merrick Garland telling a group of reporters last week that he was committed to maintaining the "integrity" of the inquiry.
"We have to get this right," he said. "And for the people who are concerned, as I think every American should be, about protecting democracy, we have to do two things: We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism, the way the Justice Department conducts investigations."