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Promptly after news broke of possible classified documents found in Mike Pence’s Indiana home, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to back the former vice president: “Leave him alone!!!”
“Mike Pence is an innocent man,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday. “He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!”
The 45th president’s comments come as documents, which “potentially contain sensitive or classified information,” were found in Pence’s residential home in Indiana, The Hill reported.
According to a Jan. 18 letter from Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob to the National Archives, Pence sought outside counsel to do a review of documents stored in his home following the bombshell report that classified documents were found at Joe Biden’s Delaware residence and the Penn Biden Center.
The letter states:
“Following press reports of classified documents at the personal home of President Biden, out of an abundance of caution, on Monday, January 16, Vice President Pence engaged outside counsel, with experience in handling classified documents, to review records stored in his personal home. Counsel identified a small number of documents that could potentially contain sensitive or classified information interspersed throughout the records.”
The documents were then immediately secured in a locked safe “pending further direction on proper handling from the National Archives,” the letter added.
Jacob sent another letter to the National Archives Sunday, informing them that the FBI on Thursday had collected the secured documents from Pence’s home while he was in Washington D.C. to attend the March for Life. Among the two boxes of documents containing alleged classified markings, the FBI also retrieved two other boxes containing “copies of Vice Presidential papers” that Pence is “permitted to obtain and retain copies of.”
Jacob added that he is confident that “the substantial majority of the documents in the four boxes would, upon examination, be found to be personal copies of other records that were previously transmitted to the Archives.”
Per Fox News, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., confirmed to the outlet that Pence’s team notified him about the discovery of potentially classified documents. Unlike Biden, the former vice president “agreed to fully cooperate with congressional oversight and any questions we have about the matter,” Comer added.
“Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people,” Comer stated.