After Joe Biden, classified documents found at former VP Mike Pence’s Indiana home

Pence is the latest high-level official to find himself at loggerheads with the Justice Department over the discovery of classified information in his personal possession – sensitive material that should be monitored and kept in secure storage.

There are two special counsels overseeing the investigation into documents found in the private office of President Joe Biden and the Delaware home and Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump.

Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacobs, told the National Archives about the document’s discovery in a January 18 letter, saying the material had been “inadvertently boxed” and sent to Pence’s home after he leaves office in January 2021. was given. The letters were provided to Bloomberg by a Pence spokesman.

“Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his private residence,” Jacobs wrote. Any proper investigation.”

‘An abundance of caution’

According to Jacobs, Pence brought in a lawyer to search his home on January 16 “out of an abundance of caution” following recent reports about the discovery of classified material at Biden’s home in Delaware.

In a second letter to the National Archives dated January 22, Jacobs reported that on January 19, the Justice Department asked to retrieve the documents, and that Pence—who was in Washington for the anti-abortion March for Life—agreed. Happened.

FBI agents came to his home that evening to collect the records, which were being kept in a safe. Jacobs wrote that he also arranged for the National Archives to move the two boxes in which the classified information was found, along with any other boxes containing “courtesy copies” of the vice president’s letters of all administrative records, to be turned over Was.

CNN had earlier on Tuesday reported the documents were found at Pence’s home. Pence’s spokeswoman declined to comment further. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pence told The Associated Press in an interview last August that he did not receive any classified information to his knowledge when he left office. He also criticized what he called a “double standard” in how the Justice Department has handled the discovery of classified documents from Biden and Trump.

“The Biden papers should be dealt with in the exact same way President Trump’s papers have been handled and examined with the same thoroughness and care,” Pence said in a January 11 interview with CBS.