Former VP Mike Pence won’t be charged over classified documents at Indiana home
Former Vice President Mike Pence will not be charged with mishandling classified information after the FBI closed its investigation into sensitive documents found in January at his Indiana home, a source familiar with the matter told The Post Friday.
The Justice Department confirmed in a letter to Pence’s attorney that “no charges will be sought,” according to CNN, which first reported the decision.
An adviser to Pence told The Post the former VP’s team was “pleased but not surprised at the outcome.”
The news comes five days before Pence will enter the 2024 presidential race, joining an increasingly crowded field that includes his former boss, 76-year-old Donald Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Approximately a dozen documents with classified markings were found in two boxes at Pence’s home outside Indianapolis Jan. 16.
The boxes were retrieved by the FBI three days later.
The former vice president had instructed his lawyers to sweep the home following revelations that President Biden improperly stored highly sensitive material at his former think tank office and his primary Delaware residence.
Federal agents returned to Pence’s Carmel, Ind. home Feb. 10 to conduct a further five-hour search, which yielded “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,” Pence’s rep said at the time.
The documents that were turned over reportedly had been taken from the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory in northwest Washington, while other material came from a West Wing office drawer.
Pence made no excuses for keeping the documents at his home, telling an audience Jan. 27 at Florida International University in Miami: “While I was not aware that the classified documents were in our personal residence, let me be clear, those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence. Mistakes were made and I take full responsibility.”
In addition to Pence, both Biden, 80, and Trump are under special counsel investigation over potential violations of federal law governing the handling of classified material.
The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8 to retrieve hundreds of documents after the former president insisted he had a right to keep some of the files.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Nov. 18 appointed prosecutor Jack Smith to serve as a special counsel to determine if Trump violated any laws.
Biden’s lawyers initially found approximately 10 classified documents on Nov. 2 while clearing out his stately former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
Some of the papers reportedly were marked “top secret” and deal with Iran and Ukraine.
Additional classified documents were found on Dec. 20 next to Biden’s prized 1967 Corvette Stingray in his Wilmington garage, and a series of additional searches turned up other records in the home.
On Jan. 12, Garland appointed special counsel Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s handling of documents.
In response to the news about his former No. 2, Trump claimed on his Truth Social platform that he too should be cleared of charges for mishandling records.
“Just announced that they are not going to bring charges against Mike Pence on the document hoax. That’s great, but when am I going to be fully exonerated, I’m at least as innocent as he is,” the 45th president wrote.
“And what about Joe Biden, who is hiding at least 1850 boxes, and some located in Chinatown, DC? When will the witch hunt against ‘TRUMP’ stop?” he added.
Trump’s reference to Chinatown identifies the DC neighborhood where Biden kept his post-vice presidency office.
His reference to “boxes” refers to Biden’s Senate papers kept by the University of Delaware.
But Trump’s classified document woes show no sign of relenting — adding to the Republican frontrunner’s legal challenges, which also feature a looming trial next year in Manhattan in a business-records case over 2016 hush money payments, in addition to investigations of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss.
CNN reported this week that Smith is probing a tape recording of Trump claiming in 2021 to possess a US military plan to invade Iran.
Trump reportedly referenced the plan, which he said was written by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, to rebut Milley’s reported concern that Trump would order an attack on Iran in the waning days of his presidency.
However, it’s unclear if the record actually was in Trump’s possession and Milley reportedly didn’t write such a plan.
The investigation of Biden’s conduct, meanwhile, has featured relatively few leaks to the press and Biden has sought to downplay the controversy over his handling of records dating to his vice presidency and Senate years.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” the president said the same day Hur was appointed special counsel.
A week later, in California, Biden told reporters of the documents: “There is no there there.” On Feb. 8, the president claimed in a PBS interview that to “the best of my knowledge, the kind of things they picked up are things that [are] from 1974, stray papers.”
First son Hunter Biden, who is under federal investigation for possible tax fraud, money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying, frequently visited his dad’s Wilmington home and listed it as his own residence on a 2018 background check form.
A photo from Hunter’s abandoned laptop showed a beaten-up cardboard box of “Important Doc’s” at the home, which lacked Secret Service protection for a period when Joe Biden was a private citizen.
It’s unclear what records the box held.
