July 25 (UPI) -- Marc Short, chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, said Monday that he testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Short confirmed his appearance before the grand jury last week in an interview with ABC News on Monday night, making him the highest-ranking Trump White House official known to have appeared before the grand jury.
He told ABC News that he was subpoenaed by the grand jury and complied but said he "really can't comment further than that," citing advice from his legal counsel.
Pence's legal counsel, Greg Jacob, also testified before the grand jury, ABC News and The New York Times reported.
Both Short and Jacob were present in the Oval Office for a meeting on Jan. 4, 2021, when then-President Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman attempted to convince Pence to interfere with the certification of President Joe Biden's electoral victory.
Pence ultimately refused, drawing the ire of Trump, who referred to him as a "coward" in a tweet during the riots, which former White House aides said added "fuel to the fire" during a public hearing by a House select committee conducting a parallel investigation on Thursday.
Short also testified before the House committee saying that he informed Pence's lead Secret Service agent that Trump was going to publicly turn on Pence for refusing to go along with the plan.
"I think that having the Capitol ransacked the way that it was, I think did present a liability danger," Short told ABC News on Monday. "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 closed to the vice president, I do think that there would have been a massacre in the Capitol that day."
Jacob testified in a public hearing before the House committee last month, stating that the alternate electors Eastman said would allow him to overturn the election results didn't exist.
"The vice president's first instinct when he heard this theory was that there was no way that our framers, who abhorred concentrated power and who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person -- particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election -- in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election," he said.