Another top aide to Pence is meeting with January 6 committee

By Zachary Cohen, Holmes Lybrand, Ryan Nobles and Annie Grayer, CNN

Greg Jacob, a top aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, met with the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot on Tuesday.

CNN spotted Jacob leaving a meeting room on Capitol Hill used by the committee to conduct witness interviews, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed he was scheduled to appear before the panel on Tuesday.

“We’re glad he came. And obviously it’s part of the work that we do,” Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the panel, told CNN of Jacob later Tuesday. “He’s a great patriot. He loves this country more so than other people who don’t.”

Jacob’s meeting with the committee comes after CNN first reported that Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, sat for an interview last week.

Short, who was with Pence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and participated in a critical White House meeting on January 4, 2021, is seen as a potentially crucial witness in the committee’s investigation as the panel pieces together the pressure campaign then-President Donald Trump and his allies waged to try to convince Pence not to certify the presidential election.

As Pence’s general counsel, Jacob played a critical role in countering efforts to persuade the former vice president not to certify the electoral results. He was part of the vice president’s team that pushed back against John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who embraced fringe legal theories about the vice president’s ability to overturn the election.

The committee has long considered Jacob a potential fact-witness in their probe. But he became more prominent following a report in The Washington Post, which CNN has confirmed, that Eastman, who was advising Trump, sent Jacob an email during the riot blaming Pence for causing the violence at the US Capitol.

In addition to Short and Jacob, the committee has already questioned retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, his former national security adviser who was with Trump at the White House on January 6, as well as retired Judge Michael Luttig, whose tweets on Pence’s role on January 6 were cited by Pence in his letter released the morning of January 6 announcing he would certify the election.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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