WATCH: Ex-VP Pence Was Asked Point Blank if He Took Any Classified Docs from the White House and Denied it
CNN anchor John King said he didn’t want to “pick on” former Vice President Mike Pence as he played two different clips of Pence saying he didn’t take any classified documents home — months before such documents were discovered at his Indiana home.
Amid two roiling cases of classified documents being found in private spaces, CNN reported Tuesday afternoon that a third can of worms has been opened in the form of about a dozen documents that were discovered in Pence’s home and immediately turned over.
In Pence’s case, the documents were not in a secure location, but as soon as the ex-veep’s attorneys found them, they secured the papers in a safe and contacted the federal government. In a letter, a representative for the former vice president said the documents were “inadvertently boxed” and sent to Pence’s home.
On Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s Inside Politics, King tried not to be too hard on Pence as he played two different clips — one from ABC News and one from Fox Business Network — in which Pence was emphatic about his handling of classified materials:
JOHN KING: And so this is not to pick on the former vice president, because I think we now have seen that this can happen. But in November, as the Trump story was breaking, we did not know at this point about the Biden story. In the Trump story back in November, the former vice president sat down with ABC News and it was quite direct.
DAVID MUIR: Did you take any classified documents with you from the White House?
VP PENCE: I did not.
DAVID MUIR: Do you see any reason for anyone to take classified documents with them leaving the White House?
VP PENCE: Well, there’d be no reason to have classified documents, particularly if they were in an unprotected area.
JOHN KING: Well, there were classified documents and they were in, as you reported, unprotected area. Do they have any explanation for that? I don’t say that to pick on the former vice president, who is known as a cautious, meticulous person. But yet again, this has happened.
JAMIE GANGEL: Look, we went through this with Biden. He said he was surprised. I think it’s clear former Vice President Pence was surprised as well. These do seem to be inadvertent. That said, how did it happen? Our reporting is that in the final days of packing up both the West Wing, the White House office and the residence office, that these classified documents were likely at the vice president’s residence and they did not go through the same rigorous checking that was happening over at the White House. And so they got packed up with personal things that were coming from the residence.
JOHN KING: And again, to that point, what you just said, listen, this is the former vice president of the United States. This is talking to Fox Business this month, in January, on January 12, saying I was extra careful. Listen.
VP PENCE: I received the presidential daily brief at the vice president’s residence. I’d rise early. I’d go to the safe for my military. Aid would place those classified materials. I’d pull them out, review them. I’d receive a presentation to them. And then, frankly, more often than not, Larry, would simply return them back to the file that I’d receive them in. They went in commonly into what was called a burn bag that my military aid would gather and then destroy those classified materials. Same goes in materials that I would receive at the White House.
JOHN KING: So again, in both interviews, he’s speaking with quite, with certainty, not me. Didn’t happen. Not an protected place. We had a process. And yet.
Watch above via CNN’s Inside Politics.
