Two weeks after the Republican confessed having a “limited number” of official files at his house, the FBI discovered another sensitive document at the former vice president Mike Pence’s property on Friday.
Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for Pence, told US media that during a “thorough and unconstrained” five-hour search of the Carmel, Indiana, home with Pence’s permission, authorities discovered the material.
According to him, they eliminated “six additional documents without such marks and one document with classified markings that were not detected in the initial assessment by the vice president’s counsel.”
The search was prompted by Pence’s assertion last month that a staff member had found secret documents, which were probably taken with other items when he departed the White House in January 2021. Pence is considering a bid for the presidency in 2024.
Following that, searches of former president Donald Trump and vice president Joe Biden’s houses also uncovered secret information.
All official documents from the White House must be turned up to the National Archives by former top US officials.
When FBI officers searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last August, despite Trump’s claims that no confidential material was there, a crisis sprang out.
The National Archives had been requesting all of the items Trump brought with him for months prior to that.
An independent Justice Department prosecutor is looking into the former president for illegally stealing and keeping the sensitive documents as well as obstruction for impeding the inquiry.
Secret documents were later found at a Washington office that Biden used before he was elected president, following the eruption of the Trump case.
This resulted in FBI searches being allowed at Biden’s residences in Wilmington, Delaware, where more records were discovered, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where none were.
“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,” added O’Malley in the statement quoted by multiple US media outlets.
O’Malley didn’t respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The most recent discovery for Pence brought an end to two days of unfavorable headlines. Pence was reportedly subpoenaed on Thursday in a separate federal investigation investigating Trump’s attempt to rig the 2020 election and his involvement in the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
