FBI agents searched the Indiana home of Mike Pence on Friday for classified documents the former vice president identified last month, according to a person familiar with the matter.
(Bloomberg) — FBI agents searched the Indiana home of Mike Pence on Friday for classified documents the former vice president identified last month, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Pence had agreed to Friday’s search, which was related to the classified documents discovery, a Justice Department official said.
Pence had brought in a lawyer to search his home on Jan. 16 “out of an abundance of caution” following recent reports about the discovery of classified material at President Joe Biden’s home in Delaware.
Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob told the National Archives in a letter last month that Pence had “a small number” of documents marked as classified at his home that were turned over to the FBI following a search, saying that the materials were “inadvertently boxed” and sent to Pence’s home after he left office in January 2021.
Pence’s office and the FBI declined to comment. Politico first reported the search.
In a second letter to the National Archives in January, Jacob said that on Jan. 19, the Justice Department asked to retrieve the documents, and that Pence agreed. FBI agents came to his home that evening to get the records, which were being kept in a safe.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the FBI was retrieving on Friday.
Pence has vowed to cooperate fully with any inquiry about the documents.
“During the closing days of administration, when materials were boxed and assembled, some of which were shipped to our personal residence, mistakes were made,” Pence said on Fox News on Jan. 27. “We were not aware of it at the time until we did the review just a few short weeks ago. But I take full responsibility for it and we’re going to continue to support every appropriate inquiry into it.”
The Justice Department has appointed special counsels to investigate how documents with classification markings ended up at private residences of Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Biden and Pence have cooperated with authorities to find and return the documents. Trump refused, arguing he had declassified the papers when he took them to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. The FBI conducted the search of his home under a subpoena on Aug. 8, 2022.
–With assistance from Nancy Cook and Jack Gillum.
(Updates with details, background beginning in first paragraph)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.