Former Vice President Mike Pence has turned over two boxes of documents containing classified markings that were discovered at his private residence in Indiana on Tuesday.
Pence informed the United States Congress that he has found records containing classified markings from his time as Vice President in the Trump administration.
The FBI took the documents from the former VP’s Indiana residence on January 19, when he was in Washington D.C. attending the annual anti-abortion March for Life.
The Justice Department’s National Security Division and the FBI are now reviewing the documents that were in the former VP’s possession after him leaving office in 2020.
Pence attorney Greg Jacob informed the National Archives of the discovery in a letter on January 18th, two days after the records were discovered.
“The additional records appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former Vice President at the end of the last Administration,” Jacob wrote to Archives official Kate McClure.
The letter further read, “[f]ollowing press reports of classified documents at the personal home of President Biden, out of an abundance of caution, on Monday, January 16, Vice President Pence engaged outside counsel, with experience in handling classified documents, to review records stored in his personal home.
“Counsel identified a small number of documents that could potentially contain sensitive or classified information interspersed throughout the records. Vice President Pence’s counsel, however, is unable to provide an exact description of the folders or briefing materials that may contain sensitive or classified information because counsel did not review the contents of the documents once an indicator of potential classification was identified. Vice President Pence immediately secured those documents in a locked safe pending further direction on proper handling from the National Archives.”
In a separate letter sent on Jan. 22, Jacob wrote to Archives official, Jay Bosanko informing him that “on the evening of January 19, the Department of Justice bypassed the standard procedures and requested direct possession. Even though the Vice President was in Washington, D.C. to attend the March for Life, he still immediately agreed in the interest of ensuring an expeditious collection. FBI agents came to the Indiana residence of Vice President Pence at 9:30 p.m. to collect the documents that had been secured in his safe.”
Jacob further disclosed that “two boxes in which a small number of papers appearing to bear classified markings [were] found.”
This discovery comes after the controversy of President Joe Biden’s handling of classified material dating back to his time as a US Senator and Vice President blooming the news after similar classified records were found at his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware, and a vacant office he used at a DC think tank.
Reports allege that Biden’s discovery of the classified records was kept secret ahead of the November midterm elections for politically motivated reasons.
Former President Donald Trump defended his running mate in his latest post on Truth Social, writing,
“Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!”
Trump responds to news former VP Mike Pence's team discovered classified documents at his home in Indiana…
"Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!" pic.twitter.com/ocffl6JKPo
— Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) January 24, 2023
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