Former US vice president Mike Pence on Tuesday said that he had uncovered documents marked as classified at his home, the latest twist in a mushrooming scandal over politicians’ handling of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Pence, seen as an outside bet for the presidency next year, had his lawyer inform the National Archives last week of a “small number” of records that were “inadvertently boxed” and transported to his home in Indiana as he left office in 2021.
He informed the Republican-led US House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Accountability about the cache on Tuesday, committee Chairman James Comer said.
Photo: AFP
Comer said in a statement that Pence had agreed to “fully cooperate with congressional oversight and any questions we have about the matter.”
It was not immediately clear what information the documents contained or the level of classification they had been allocated.
The discovery comes in the wake of the revelations about classified material discovered in US President Joe Biden’s private office and residence, and allegations that Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, obstructed justice over an FBI probe of a much larger stash of government secrets found at his home.
“Former vice president Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people,” Comer said, without mentioning the Trump case.
Pence had asked his lawyer to conduct the search of his home out of an “abundance of caution,” CNN reported, citing unnamed sources, and the attorney last week began going through four boxes stored at Pence’s house.
“Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
The development came as Republicans ramped up their probe of classified documents in the possession of Biden, who was the vice president under then-US president Barack Obama when they were removed from the White House.
Records were unearthed in a private think tank office where Biden used to work in Washington in early November, in his Wilmington, Delaware, garage on Dec. 20 and in his home library on Jan. 12.
US Department of Justice officials found six more classified documents during a search of the Delaware house last week.
Comer has asked the think tank for all its communications related to security by Wednesday next week, along with a list of employees and others with keycard access and a log of Biden’s visitors.
Government officials can face action over civil or criminal violations for mishandling classified records, but sitting presidents cannot be indicted thanks to a justice department policy.
Justice department special counsels Robert Hur and Jack Smith are conducting criminal investigations into the Biden and Trump documents respectively.
Republicans have added the scandal to their growing pile of investigations of the Biden administration and accuse the federal government of holding Trump to a higher standard than his successor.
However, the White House has been trying to draw a contrast between the Biden and Trump cases, underscoring that the president’s alleged conduct is significantly less egregious than the actions of which Trump is accused.
“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,” Richard Sauber, special attorney to the president, said in a statement.
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