So now Mike Pence, former US Vice President. On Tuesday, CNN first reported that confidential files that do not belong there had also been discovered at his home in Indiana. As with his former boss Donald Trump in Florida and in Washington and Delaware with his successor Joe Biden, the current president. It’s episode three of this story that’s getting more and more embarrassing. How can it be that the most important men of the world power were so sloppy with their moves?
The continuation of this series takes place in Carmel on the outskirts of Indianapolis, where the new property of the Pence family stands between trees, meadows and water. Last week, his attorney Matt Morgan found about a dozen papers marked “classified,” a sign of confidentiality, under that roof.
The documents were in moving boxes that were still taped shut
Pence’s lawyers informed the National Archives where such material belongs after the tenure. The US Department of Justice sent the FBI. It was a “small number of documents marked as classified,” said Pence consultant Greg Jacob. The Vice President was not aware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence, but understands their importance and will cooperate with any appropriate investigation.
Pence had permanently vacated his White House office and living quarters at the Naval Observatory on January 20, 2021. The moving boxes apparently ended up first in Virginia, where Pence temporarily moved into quarters, and then in Indiana. They were said to be taped shut and not opened until the lawyer recently checked and had his finds placed in the safe before authorities arrived. The Pence people now want to have acted according to protocol like the Biden people. But in the meantime, a former and an incumbent US president and a former US vice president have had trouble explaining themselves.
To his knowledge, he did not take any papers with him, Pence said last summer when police officers seized a large number of classified documents during a raid on Trump in Mar-a-Lago. As late as November, he couldn’t understand why anyone would be hoarding classified documents, “especially if they’re in an unprotected area.” At the same time, Pence railed against “enforcing a search warrant at the personal residence of a former President of the United States.”
The state secrets were probably packed by interns
Trump refused to hand it over, and the FBI took action. In the meantime, however, Attorney General Merrick Garland has also appointed a special investigator in the Biden case, in addition to the Trump case. At Biden, files from his time as a senator and vice president appeared in several places, including next to an old sports car in his garage. What is in all these secret papers is unknown. But the affairs meanwhile involve two leading Republicans and the leading Democrat.
All three could be candidates for the 2024 presidential election, Trump has already announced his candidacy. The investigation is likely to drag on into the election campaign. For Trump, Pence is “an innocent man,” innocent, that’s how he sees himself. Dissatisfaction with these potential applicants, however, is growing with different priorities in both parties.
Democrats and Republicans want to check which state secrets were stored privately there. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recommends getting to the bottom of the matter. “I don’t believe for a minute that Mike Pence was trying to intentionally endanger national security. But we clearly have a problem here.”
That’s the strangest thing he’s ever seen, says colleague Marco Rubio. “I have no reason to believe it’s nefarious in any way, but obviously the executive branch is just box-packing,” Rubio said. “Can we all agree that this shouldn’t happen?” asks Senator Kevin Cramer, also a Republican. It must be possible for someone other than the intern to pack such boxes in the future.