Pence aide calls Trump’s bluff and dares him to present election fraud 'proof' to court

Former Mike Pence aide Marc Short dared former President Donald Trump to defend his own voter fraud claims in court when he stands trial for the criminal charges in the January 6 investigation, during an interview on CNN Wednesday.

Altogether, Trump and his allies lost over 60 lawsuits alleging various voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election. But now he's faced with charges for a scheme to overturn the election results, his lawyers are telegraphing a completely different legal strategy.

"Based on your read of the indictment and sense of where the former vice president is on this, do you believe there is clear evidence of criminality?" asked anchor Phil Mattingly.

"You know, it's hard for me to know whether there was criminality. I think the president was wrong," said Short.

That being said, he added, "One of the biggest shifts we have seen in the last 24 hours — if you just pull back for a second, I think it's pretty tremendous — which is that for two and a half years, I think, the president and his team argued that, look, the election was stolen, it was fraudulent, and if I only had my chance to present my evidence, like the courts rejected the chance to do that, the Congress rejected the chance to share my evidence. If he has the evidence, then all these conspiracy charges would go away."

However, Trump's lawyers are not arguing that anymore, Short said. "Instead, they are saying he has a First Amendment right, which is in essence saying, all elected officials lie, are you going to charge everybody?"

"It's different than it was stolen, to now saying, look, yeah, maybe Mike Pence was right and really I don't know that it was stolen, but I have a right to tell the American people misrepresentations, which I think is a dramatic change in what they have been saying publicly the last 24 hours," said Short.

Watch the video below or at the link here.