NEW: Mike Pence’s Indiana Home Next Target of FBI in Ongoing Classified Documents Search That Began With Mar-a-Lago
The FBI will be conducting search for classified documents at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence, the Wall Street Journal reported first on Thursday. Pence joins Donald Trump and Joe Biden in having a residence searched in the ongoing classified document retention controversies.
President Biden’s Delaware beach house was searched just days ago as the Justice Department continues to look into the possession and storage of classified documents, a potential national security risk.
The Wall Street Journal and MSNBC’s Kristen Welker and Andrea Mitchell note that this search is being undertaken cooperatively with Pence’s team.
“So this would be basically doing the same thing that they did with Joe Biden and agreed-upon search, no warrant required, none of the techniques — not going to a court to get a judge’s warrant, not an unscheduled search, and not after months and months of delay, as with Donald Trump,” said Mitchell.
The anchor added that polling shows an “equal number of people” blame both Biden and Trump for their classified document scandals, because they “are not making that distinction between a cooperative search and what happened in the Trump case.”
It’s worth noting that it is having the documents and how they are stored that Americans expressed “concern” about in the NBC News poll, not how cooperative anyone was with those documents being discovered and recovered.
Still, Welker added, “politically speaking, this issue seems to be a wash.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that the search will be conducted in the coming days, and that Pence’s team is confident that, like with President Biden’s beach home, no further documents or materials marked classified will be discovered.
A person close to Mr. Pence said his legal team considered their earlier search exhaustive and doesn’t believe additional classified documents exist there. The Justice Department and FBI have taken pains to respond similarly to each discovery, in keeping with Mr. Garland’s stated mission of treating like cases alike.
Mr. Pence’s lawyers have said the former vice president took the documents inadvertently and they have been fully cooperating with the Justice Department. Mr. Biden’s aides have made similar statements regarding documents found at the president’s premises.
Authorities appear to be moving aggressively in response to each new document disclosure.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
