A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence found 12 classified documents in a search of his Indiana home in the latest development related to the handling of secret information by officials.
Pence quickly moved to notify authorities and handed over the documents unearthed in the search, which was launched after similar searches turned up classified materials at President Joe Biden’s home and office.
“A small number of documents bearing classified markings ... were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former Vice President at the end of the last Administration,” Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, told the National Archives in a letter last week.
Jacob said Pence, who is considering a 2024 presidential run, had no idea the documents were stored at his home and is cooperating fully with an investigation.
“Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,” Jacob said.
The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s home in Carmel, Indiana.
The discovery mirrors the recent discovery of several sets of documents at an office once used by Biden before his return to the White House and his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Special counsel Robert Hur has been appointed to investigate the Biden documents.
The Pence and Biden finds are different from the case involving former President Donald Trump, who took hundreds of classified documents to his Florida home when he left the White House in 2021.
Trump resisted efforts to retrieve the documents and defied a subpoena for their return.
A federal judge authorized a search of Mar-a-Lago, which turned up about 300 classified documents.
Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating the Trump document issue as well as Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the plot to overturn his election loss to Biden.
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