him chief of staff for the House Republican Conference in 2009. He remained in the position until 2011. Short was then hired by Koch Industries and eventually transitioned to become the President of Freedom Partners, a non-profit, 501(c)(6) chamber of commerce located in Arlington, Virginia that is largely funded by Charles and David Koch. He served as the organization's President until 2016. In February 2016, Short left his position at Freedom Partners to start his own consulting firm. Among his clients were Marco Rubio's presidential campaign and Pence's Indiana gubernatorial campaign. Pence eventually withdrew from the gubernatorial race to become Trump's running mate. On June 16, 2016, Short was named Communications Advisor to then vice presidential candidate Pence. Trump administration President Trump named Short the Director of Legislative Affairs on January 4, 2017. Short announced he would leave the White House post in the summer of 2018, citing “diminishing returns” of pushing President Donald Trump’s agenda. On February 19, 2019, Vice President Mike Pence announced Short would be his next Chief of Staff, beginning in March 2019. On November 20, 2019, Short issued a statement rebutting the sworn testimony given that same day before Congress by US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Sondland claimed while meeting with Pence that the two discussed the alleged "quid pro quo" that was at the heart of the impeachment inquiry before the House. Marc Short wrote the vice president "never had a conversation with Gordon Sondland about investigating the Bidens, Burisma, or the conditional release of financial aid to Ukraine based upon potential investigations." Later that evening during Cuomo Prime Time, the statement was described as being well crafted and that it didn't deny that Pence already knew about Trump's requests. During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, Short played an important role on Vice President Mike Pence's coronavirus task force. During the response to the coronavirus pandemic, Short persistently downplayed the dangers of the pandemic, and criticized the data shared with Trump that modeled an estimated 100,000 - 240,000 U.S. deaths under a continuation of the administration's social distancing policies, and as many as 1.6 million - 2.2 million U.S. deaths in the absence of any mitigation efforts. In internal White House discussions, Short said he did not believe that the U.S. death toll would ever go beyond 60,000. In internal discussions, Short also criticized the administration's public health response in a