House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attempted to draw a distinction between the documents found at former vice president Mike Pence’s home and those discovered at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Independent asked Mr McCarthy about CNN’s report that Mr Pence found documents at his home in Carmel, Indiana and promptly returned them.
Mr McCarthy has previously criticised the fact that the FBI executed a search warrant on former president Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago in August. The House recently voted on a resolution to create a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government partially in a response to the multiple investigations into Mr Trump.
Representative Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will serve as chairman of the committee, alongside arch-conservatives like Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Darrell Issa of California and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming. In addition, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York, who served as the chief critic of the first impeachment of Mr Trump, will serve on the committee.
The news also comes as Mr Biden faces criticism from Republicans after it was revealed that he had documents from his time as vice president at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. During the weekend, the White House said that the Justice Department removed six additional documents, including documents dating back to his time as a Senator from Delaware.
But Mr McCarthy attempted to draw a distinction between Mr Pence and Mr Biden’s situations because of the fact that the Justice Department recently found documents as a senator.
“He’s got classified documents when he was a US Senator,” Mr McCarthy told The Independent during his press conference. Mr McCarthy noted how senators have to view classified documents in a Senstivie Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF for short.
“I don’t even understand how that transpires,” he said. “I do not understand how a US senator can take a classified document out of a SCIF, if they’re stuffing it in their pants or somewhere else.”
Mr McCarthy also said that Mr Pence notified House Oversight & Accountability Chairman James Comer about the documents. Mr Comer told The Independent that the committee planned to treat Mr Pence and Mr Biden the same way.
“We’ve got to reform the way these documents leave,” he said. “What the biggest mystery is how Biden ended with some as a senator and how they ended up in so many, multiple locations. But with respect to Pence, we’re going to treat him the exact same way we’ve treated Biden.”
