Classified Document Discovered During Search at Pence’s Home

 Federal authorities found an additional document with classified markings during a search of the home of former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday.

According to NBC News, investigators spent about five hours in Pence’s home for an unrestricted search for any classified documents. The adviser, Devin O’Malley, said the markings were on just one page and not six additional pages.

The adviser, Devin O’Malley, said that the “Department of Justice completed a thorough and unrestricted search of five hours and removed one document with classified markings and six additional pages without such markings that were not discovered in the initial review by the vice president’s counsel.”

“The vice president has directed his legal team to continue its cooperation with appropriate authorities and to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter,” he added.

Reports broke early Friday that the FBI was searching Pence’s home for classified documents, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News.

Reportedly, the search came after Pence found a “small number” of classified documents in his home in Carmel, Indiana, and one day after he was subpoenaed in a federal probe. The search on Friday was negotiated between Pence’s team and the Department of Justice (via NBC):

    The search came weeks after Pence reported finding a “small number” of classified documents in his home in Carmel and a day after it was revealed he had been subpoenaed in a separate federal probe — the special counsel’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s effort to stay in office after the 2020 election and role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

    A Justice Department official confirmed to NBC News the search was a “consent” search agreed upon by the department and Pence’s lawyers, and there were no search warrants issued in advance. All the ground rules for the search were stipulated to during negotiations between the Justice Department and the Pence team, the official said.

    […]

    In a letter to the National Archives last month, Pence lawyer Greg Jacob said they’d found a “small number” of classified documents at the former vice president’s home after Pence asked “outside counsel” to look for documents in the wake of such papers being found in Biden’s Delaware home.

    Jacob said the documents had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s home at the end of the Trump administration and that the former vice president “was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence.”

    Pence’s team “immediately” secured the classified documents in a locked safe after their Jan. 16 discovery, and FBI agents came to Pence’s home to retrieve the documents a few days later, the letter said.

Obama-era classified documents were found in the possession of President Joe Biden. And, as Matt reported this week, Biden blamed the individuals who packed his offices.

“What was not done well is, as they [the movers] packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should’ve been done, to go thoroughly through every piece of literature that’s there,” Biden told Judy Woodruff in an interview on PBS’s “NewsHour.” He then called the documents that were found “stray papers.”