‘Classified documents found at Donald Trump vice president Mike Pence’s home’
Classified documents were reportedly discovered at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence.
A lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump’s vice president found a dozen documents with classified markings in Pence’s Carmel, Indiana home last week, several sources told CNN on Tuesday.
The former vice president previously said repeatedly that he did not take classified records with him after the end of the Trump administration.
Pence asked his attorney out of an abundance of caution to look through his home, according to the sources. The lawyer found a small number of documents while sifting through four boxes in the home. The records first went to Pence’s temporary residence in Virginia before going to Indiana.
The report comes within two weeks of news of classified documents uncovered in Biden’s former office at a Washington, DC, think tank and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Pence’s lawyer immediately informed the National Archives, which notified the Justice Department, the sources said.
A lawyer Pence said he handed the classified material over to the FBI’s Indianapolis field office the same evening.
On Monday, Pence’s legal team delivered boxes to the National Archives to review other material inside to ensure it complied with the Presidential Records Act.
Pence’s representative Greg Jacobs in a letter to the Archives said that a ‘small number of documents bearing classified markings’ were inadvertently placed in a box and moved to his Indiana home.
‘Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,’ wrote Jacobs in the letter obtained by CNN.
‘Vice President Pence understands the high importance of protecting sensitive and classified information and stands ready and willing to cooperate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate inquiry.’
Pence’s lawyer said he searched the former vice president’s office in Washington, DC, and that there was no material covered by the Presidential Records Act.
Trump did not immediately comment on the classified records recovered from Pence, whom he had a falling out with after the ex-vice president proceeded to certify the 2020 election results in favor of Joe Biden.
FBI agents seized boxes of classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in a raid last August. The Justice Department is investigating Trump and Biden’s handling of classified records found in their respective homes.
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