The FBI was searching the home of former Vice President Mike Pence in Indiana on Friday, looking for classified documents that might be in the house, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News.
The move comes weeks after Pence reported finding a «small number» of classified documents at his Carmel, Indiana home, and a day after it was revealed that he had been subpoenaed in a separate federal investigation: the prosecutor’s inquiry. on the case of former President Donald Trump. effort to stay in office after the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
The Friday search date was negotiated between Pence’s team and the Justice Department, the official said.
The classified documents were found following the discovery of classified Obama-era documents in the possession of former Vice President Joe Biden, and also after the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump’s home after his lawyers claimed he had returned all the documents with classified White House marks.
More than 100 of those documents were found during the August search in Mar-a-Lago, Justice Department officials said in court documents.
In a letter to the National Archives last month, Pence’s attorney, Greg Jacob, said they had found a «small number» of classified documents at Pence’s home after Pence asked «outside counsel» to search documents after those documents were found at Biden’s home in Delaware.
Jacob said the documents had been «inadvertently packaged 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 any confidential or classified documents at his personal residence.»
Pence’s team «immediately» secured the classified documents in a locked safe after their discovery on January 16, and FBI agents arrived at Pence’s home to retrieve the documents a few days later, the letter said.
«Vice President Pence understands the great importance of protecting confidential and classified information and stands ready and willing to fully cooperate with the National Archives and any appropriate investigation,» he said.