Classified documents found in Pence’s home include briefings for foreign trips
Among the 12 classified documents recovered from former Vice President Mike Pence’s home were reportedly several pieces of background information being prepared for his official international tours.
The documents may have been missed because they were in other old travel folders and would be difficult to spot without skimming through each of the pages, multiple sources told CNN.
Such briefing folders often contain details about the people an official will meet during his international visit, and the information contained can range from basic background information about foreign executives to more confidential information about them.
The papers’ classification labeling was at a “lower level,” the sources told CNN, and no documents were reportedly found with the highest classification levels, known as “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information” (SCI) and “Secret.”
The FBI and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division have launched an investigation into how the documents ended up in Mr. Pence’s home. His attorney told CNN the FBI asked for the documents marked confidential to be picked up that evening, to which he agreed. FBI agents at the Indianapolis field office seized the documents from his home.
Mr Pence’s representative, Greg Jacob, wrote to the National Archives that a “small number of documents bearing secret markings” were accidentally brought to his Indiana home and boxed.
The revelations come as President Joe Biden has been criticized for hiding documents from his days as Barack Obama’s vice president at his office at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania and his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
More documents were found at Mr Biden’s Delaware home over the weekend during a detailed search of his home.
Mr. Biden’s personal attorney said the president offered “full access to the president’s home” and “personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules and memories spanning decades,” despite the search was not released “in accordance with its standard procedures”.
That news, in turn, came after the FBI issued a search warrant at Mr Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach to obtain documents from his presidency.
Republicans have attempted to draw a comparison between Mr Trump and Mr Biden, stating that the FBI inappropriately searched Mr Trump’s home while not doing the same for Mr Biden. House Republicans have requested visitor logs from Mr. Biden’s home in Wilmington, although no such logs exist.
In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur to oversee the investigation of classified documents at Mr Biden’s home and office.
