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WASHINGTON Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, testified privately last week before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the latest turn in weeks of negotiations between the panels investigators and Mr. Pences team.

Mr. Short appeared in response to a subpoena from the committee, according to three people with knowledge of the developments, making him the most senior person around Mr. Pence who is known to have cooperated in the inquiry.

Investigators believe that participation by the former vice president and his inner circle is critical, because Mr. Pence resisted a pressure campaign by former President Donald J. Trump to use his role in presiding over Congresss official count of electoral votes to try to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Short was with Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 as a mob of Mr. Trumps supporters attacked the Capitol, and has firsthand knowledge of the effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to try to persuade the former vice president to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in favor of fake slates of pro-Trump electors.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity about Mr. Shorts testimony, which was earlier reported by CNN.

Investigators have been in high-stakes negotiations for months with Mr. Pences team about whether he would cooperate with the inquiry. In recent weeks, they have sought the cooperation of Mr. Short and Greg Jacob, Mr. Pences former lawyer.

Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob were both closely involved in Mr. Pences consideration of whether to go along with Mr. Trumps insistence that he try to block the official count of Electoral College results by a joint session of Congress. Three days before the proceeding, the two men met with John Eastman, a lawyer then advising Mr. Trump, about a memo Mr. Eastman had written setting out a case for why Mr. Pence had the power to hold off the certification.

As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting Hang Mike Pence, Mr. Eastman sent a hostile email to Mr. Jacob, blaming Mr. Pence for the violence.

The siege is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened, the lawyer, Mr. Eastman, wrote to Mr. Jacob.

Mr. Eastman has since invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to defy the committees subpoena.

Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pences national security adviser, has also testified before the committee. Mr. Kellogg told investigators that as rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump rejected pleas from him as well as from Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, to call for an end to the violence. He said Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trumps eldest daughter and adviser, also attempted to intervene at least twice.

Mr. Kellogg said he and Ms. Trump also witnessed a telephone call in the Oval Office on the morning of Jan. 6 in which Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to go along with a plan to throw out electoral votes. Mr. Kellogg told the committee that the president had accused Mr. Pence of not being tough enough to overturn the election.

Ms. Trump then turned to Mr. Kellogg and said, Mike Pence is a good man, Mr. Kellogg testified.

The developments come as Mr. Trump has continued to criticize Mr. Pence for refusing to embrace the call to overturn the 2020 election.

Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away, Mr. Trump said in a statement, referring to a group of senators who are discussing revamping the Electoral Count Act to clarify that the vice president cannot unilaterally change the election results. Unfortunately, he didnt exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!

Mr. Trump also said at a rally over the weekend that he might offer pardons to criminal defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, and that he would organize more protests should he be charged with a crime.

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Former Pence Chief of Staff Has Testified to the Jan. 6 Committee - The New York Times

Washington The National Archives and Records Administration will release records from Vice President Mike Pence to the House panel investigating the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, despite efforts by former President Donald Trump to shield their release.

David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, told Trump in a letter Tuesday that he will give the documents to House investigators "after consultation with the counsel to the president and the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, and as instructed by President Biden."

The Archives will deliver the records to the select committee on March 3 "unless prohibited by court order," Ferriero wrote.

The records at issue stem from two separate requests the select committee made to Archives in March and August. Trump notified the Archives in a January letter he would be asserting executive privilege over a tranche of documents, which contain vice presidential records.

But Mr. Biden rejected Trump's attempt to block the release of the records, according to a February 1 letter from White House counsel Dana Remus to the Archives, as the president determined "an assertion of such a privilege is not justified and is not in the best interests of the United States."

The records, she continued, should be turned over to the select committee in 30 days barring a court order stopping their release.

Remus said many of the records Trump asserted privilege over "were communications concerning the former vice president's responsibilities as president of the Senate in certifying the vote of presidential electors on January 6, 2021." Some of the records also involved litigation "in which certain parties were represented by the Department of Justice," she said.

Trump and his allies sought to pressure Pence to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the January 6 joint session of Congress, which was ultimately interrupted by the breach of the Capitol building by a mob of the former president's supporters.

While Trump encouraged the vice president to reject electoral votes, Pence rebuffed the former president's pressure campaign, writing in a lengthy letter the morning of January 6 he could not claim "unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not."

More than a year later, Trump has continued to allege Pence had the power to toss out state electoral votes and indicated in a statement Sunday that he wanted the vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump on Tuesday also suggested the January 6 select committee investigate "why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval."

In the course of their examination into the events surrounding the January 6 assault on the Capitol, House investigators have interviewed more than 400 witnesses and obtained over 50,000 documents, according to Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who sits on the committee.

Greg Jacob, Pence's chief counsel, met with the committee Tuesday, while Marc Short, Pence's former chief of staff, appeared before the panel last week. Members also plan to ask the former vice president to meet with them voluntarily.

Investigators, meanwhile, continue to gain access to documents from the Trump White House. Last month, they received more than 700 pages of records that were at the center of a legal battle mounted by Trump that was ultimately unsuccessful.

Congressman Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the select committee, told reporters this week that in addition to the 700-page batch from the Archives, the agency continues to produce more records.

The committee has issued dozens of subpoenas, including ones to Trump's allies, former White House officials, campaign aides and individuals involved in the planning of the rally outside the White House before the Capitol building came under siege. Two top Trump allies, Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have been held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas, and the Justice Department has charged Bannon. Both said they are following instructions from Trump, who has claimed executive privilege.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the House select committee last year earlier this year to investigate the January 6 attack, when thousands of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol as Congress counted the electoral votes, a largely ceremonial final step affirming Mr. Biden's victory. Lawmakers were sent fleeing amid the riot, which led to the deaths of five people and the arrests of hundreds more. Trump, who encouraged his supporters to "walk over" to the Capitol during the rally at the Ellipse before the electoral vote count, was impeached by the House one week later for inciting the riot but was later acquitted by the Senate.

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National Archives says it will turn over Mike Pence's records to January 6 panel - CBS News

If there was ever any doubt that Donald Trump truly believed that Mike Pence had the authority to simply overturn the results of a national presidential election because the guy he worked for didnt win, the former president has gone and outed himself.

Over the weekend, Trump issued a statement in which he outright stated that Pence could have overturned the Election! And the fact that he didnt has put Donald and his former #2 on the outsso much so that Trump is now insisting that the January 6th committee should be investigating the former vice president instead. While the sheer inanity of it all has everyone talking, Jimmy Kimmel seemed absolutely astounded by the sudden turn of events.

On Tuesday night, Kimmel mentioned the current rift between Pence and Trump (the two reportedly have not spoken in months) and the weekend statement, but noted that Today, he went about eight steps further with what is certainly among the top five craziest statements made by a former president of the United States. He wrote, on paperbecause hes not allowed to post on Twitter:

So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a Vice President cannot ensure the honest results of the election, when just one year ago they said that the Vice President has absolutely no right to ensure the true outcome or results of an election. In other words, they lied and the Vice President did have this right blah, blah, blah.

If Nancy Pelosi, who is in charge of Capitol security, had taken my recommendation and substantially increased security, there would have been no January 6th as we know it!

But that wasnt even the end of the inanity.

Kimmels favorite part of Trumps statement came when he suggested that the Unselect Committee (that will never get old) should instead be investigating why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so! In other words: Trump thinks that someone should be investigating his own vice president.

This is like Bonnie calling for an investigation into Clyde, Kimmel said. And the saddest part is Mike Pence is so pathetic, hed probably agree.

You can watch the full clip above.

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Jimmy Kimmel Compares Trump And Pence To Bonnie And Clyde - UPROXX

Generally speaking, the Washington press corps and, in particular, the political reporters at the New York Times (NYT) are not ones to engage in hyperbole when it comes to Donald Trump. If anything, the paper of record has been downplaying the ongoing saga of Trump's Big Lie and all the evidence that's been piling up about what happened in the lead-up to January 6th recently. But this week's Trump news seems to have shaken even their jaded attitude.

For instance, the Times' Peter Bakertweetedon Tuesday, "Even for Trump it's quite a week -- first dangling pardons for capitol attackers, then admitting his goal was to have 'overturned the election' and now calling on the House to investigate Pence for not throwing out votes of multiple states so a president who lost could keep power." Then the Times' Maggie Haberman, appearing on CNN on Tuesday night, said, "it's been a breathtaking couple of days."This NYT pieceby Shane Goldmacher headlined "Trump's Words, and Deeds, Reveal Depths of His Drive to Retain Power" says it all.

Earlier this week,I wroteabout Trump's scripted comments at the rally in Texas over the weekend in which he promised pardons for the January 6th insurrectionists who were "treated unfairly" and called for protests against prosecutors who are investigating him. But that was just the beginning. On Monday, Trump put outa truly revealing statement(which some might call an admission of guilt.)

Republican leaders have picked a side and it appears to be Trump's. As usual, there hasn't been much of an outcry about any of this. Oh sure, a few have said it's "inappropriate" to talk about pardoning the January 6th rioters and there has been some tut-tutting about how "the process worked" but that's about it.

Trump followed up his confession that he wanted to overturn the election bysuggestingthat the January 6th Committee should investigate Mike Pence if they believe he could have overturned the election and ask him why he didn't do it. I would guess that's Trump's pathetic attempt at trying to clean up his earlier comment but it's incredibly lame and self-defeating. He shouldn't be pushing Mike Pence toward the committee Pence's closest aide and his lawyer both testified for hours this week.

RELATED:Trump is feeling the heat from investigations and wants his mob to save him

It couldn't have helped his agitated mood to see new details emerge about those crazy meetings in the White House after the election when he and his lawyers were trying to find ways to do exactly what he wanted Mike Pence to do on January 6th: overturn the election. I've been intrigued by the one that took place on December 18th ever since it was reported andI wrote about it just the other day. What we knew was already so nuts that it's hard to believe it could be any loonier --- but it is.

Recall that General Michael Flynn, Trump lawyer Sidney "Kraken" Powell and the former CEO of Overstock.com somehow got into the White House and proposed to Trump that he sign an Executive Order naming Powell as Special Counsel to investigate the alleged election fraud and order the military to seize the voting machines. What we didn't know until theNY TimesandCNNreported it this week is that Trump had earlier tried to get former Attorney General William Barr to have the Justice Department seize machines and Barr told him he could not do it because it would require probable cause and there wasn't any. (Barr resigned not long after.)

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We also learned that when the idea of an Executive Order to the Penatagon was shot down by Rudy Giuliani and others, Trump directed Giuliani to see if the Department of Homeland Security could do it. And there was reportedly yet another draft Executive Order drawn up to that effect. In the end, none of the Executive Orders were signed and no one agreed to seize the voting machines. (Just imagine if they had actually tried to do that ...)

Until now, Trump has been portrayed as sort of passive in all this, simply receiving proposals from his minions and henchmen and not directing any of the action. It was never particularly believable except to the extent that he played the role of the mob boss who only has to quirk an eyebrow and his lieutenants know what to do. Fortunately for the country, as Salon's Amanda Marcottepoints out, Trump was saved by his lackeys and accomplices, either because they were too inept to carry out the coup or because even they had reached the end of the line with his lunacy.

But Trump can no longer hide behind his henchmen. We now know that Bill Barr told him that seizing the voting machines was illegal without a court order which requires probable cause and there was none. Yet he still entertained the proposal that he issue executive orders to the Pentagon and DHS to do it anyway. And according to the Times, Trump also made overtures to state officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania to have law enforcement agencies take control of voting machines, which were rebuffed. He was clearly convinced that if he could get someone to seize those machines it could turn the tide and somehow overturn the election.

Was it that he believed Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn's inane conspiracy theories that said the machines were rigged by the very dead Hugo Chavez or had been surreptitiously sent to Italy to have the votes changed? Or did he just think that making such a dramatic move would change the dynamic and make the state actors take action to change the electoral count? It's hard to know. Trump believes that he can change reality simply be saying things over and over again (and it works on about 35% of the population.) Maybe he just thought he could will it to be true.

These latest revelations do show us just how different these days are than 48 years ago when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had tried to get the CIA to block the FBI's investigation into Watergate. That was known as the"smoking gun"in that case and it made dozens of Republicans and conservative Democrats turn against him. He resigned days later.

What Trump did was worse.

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He tried to use the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (and for all we know the CIA and the Department of Education too) to overturn a legal election that he lost. And his party shrugs. Worse than that he is the front runner for the nomination in the next presidential election. If, for some reason, he is actually held to account for any of this -- or anything at all -- it won't be because the Republican Party lifted a finger to make it happen.

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Donald Trump's having an awful week and it's only Wednesday - Salon

Seth Meyers

Late-night hosts responded to a shocking if not surprising admission from Donald Trump this weekend, with a Sunday night statement that said the quiet part out loud: that Vice-President Mike Pence could have overturned the election.

One thing you can always count on with Trump is that eventually hell tire himself out and just confess, said Seth Meyers on Late Night. He cant help it. He just blurts it out. He did it with collusion, he did it with Ukraine, and thats exactly what he did over the weekend with a statement in which he admitted he wanted his vice-president, Mike Pence, to overturn the election.

In the statement, Trump claimed fraud and many other irregularities in the 2020 election (no such fraud has been found) and asked: How come the Democrats and Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the vice-president to change the results of the election?

Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didnt exercise that power. He could have overturned the election!

Theres no crime Trump could commit that he wouldnt later confess to, said Meyers. Hed just exhaust all the excuses until he says, screw it, Im guilty, baby! If it had been him instead of OJ, the quote wouldve been: The gloves dont fit, but you dont need gloves to stab a guy.

Trump also promised at a rally in Texas on Saturday to pardon those charged with seditious conspiracy for their role in the 6 January attack on the Capitol. At some point you just have to admit this is a pro-insurrection movement, Meyers argued. If youre at a party, and someone starts doing cocaine and someone else says, hey, can I get some of that cocaine? and then someone else says, hey, I went to the bank on the way here to get new hundred dollar bills to snort that cocaine with, you might turn to your spouse and say, I think were at a cocaine party.

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert acknowledged the retirement of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady after 22 seasons and seven Super Bowl titles. So bad news for your dad: theres a new retiree about to dominate the pickleball league, Colbert joked.

The 44-year-old QB accomplished more than any other quarterback in the history of the NFL, even though he was drafted 199th overall. Which just goes to show you that anyone can be successful as long as youre one of the most gifted and attractive people in human history, Colbert noted.

Now that Brady appears to be hanging up the old football skates, the world may finally see what weve all longed for: Dad Bod Brady, he added. Do it! Give us hope, Tom!

In other news, while the January 6 select committee continues to look for the cause of the Capitol riot, the cause admitted to everything and threatened to do it again, Colbert said, referencing Trumps rally in Texas this weekend, in which pledged to treat those people from January 6 fairly and promised pardons.

Well, as long as youre doling out pardons, fuck you, Colbert retorted.

Donald Trump is basically the ex that America kicked out for throwing an open-house party at the Capitol, said Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. And like many exes, he really wants a second chance. But instead of promising to do better next time, hes threatening to do even worse.

Noah played clips from Trumps weekend rally, in which he continued to spread his myths about the stolen 2020 election and promised to pardon those who led the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

When you think about it, its really smart what hes saying, said Noah. Because he couldve pardoned all of his people when January 6 happened. You realize that, right? He was the president. But he didnt pardon them. He let them get prosecuted, and now theyre all going to jail. He let this happen! But now that his ass is on the line, now hes like man, if I was president, Id have never let this happen to you.

Trump leans on his supporters really hard, he continued. I mean, first they had to storm the Capitol because he lost the election. Then their donations went to his legal fees, because hes always getting sued. Now they have to protest if he gets charged? Where does it end? If Trump does go to prison, is he going to make these poor people smuggle cigarettes up their butt?

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Seth Meyers on Trump rally: At some point you just have to admit this is a pro-insurrection movement - The Guardian