On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump defended Mike Pence after news broke that classified documents had been found at his former vice president’s home in Indiana.
“Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
One of Pence’s attorneys found approximately one dozen classified-marked documents at his home in Indiana last week. Those documents have since been turned over to the FBI.
Pence instructed his team to search both his Indiana home and the office at his political advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), after it was revealed that classified documents had been discovered in President Joe Biden’s former personal office at the Penn Biden Center, a Washington think tank associated with the University of Pennsylvania, on November 2.
In the wake of that revelation, numerous documents have turned up at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. No classified papers turned up in the search of Pence’s offices at AAF, according to Fox News.
It’s currently unclear as to what level of sensitivity the documents found in Pence’s home were marked nor what information was contained in them.
Former President Trump is still under investigation by the Department of Justice and special counsel Jack Smith after several boxes of documents marked classified were recovered by the FBI in August 2022 when the government entity raided Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Biden is now under special counsel investigation for his own handling of classified documents after Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped attorney Robert Hur to serve as special counsel and take control of the DOJ’s investigation into Biden earlier in January.
Biden’s attorneys found classified documents at the Penn Biden Center just six days before the 2022 midterm elections. However, this information became public in late December, leading to another search of Biden’s home.
Biden’s team found more documents stored in the garage of the president’s home in Wilmington in December. Each time the home has been searched, more documents have been found, on at least three occasions.
On Friday, the FBI conducted an official search of the residence, leading to the latest discovery of sensitive materials. Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, announced the findings of the search.
“DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President. DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,” Bauer said in a statement.