Mike Pence’s home yields more documents with classified markings | CBC News

Documents with classified markings were discovered in former U.S. vice-president Mike Pence’s Indiana home last week, according to his attorney.

“The additional records appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former vice-president at the end of the last administration,” Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, told the National Archives in a letter last week.

He said that “Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,” and that he “understands the high importance of protecting sensitive and classified information and stands ready and willing to co-operate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate inquiry.”

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on Tuesday, and a lawyer for Pence did not immediately respond to an email seeking further elaboration.

Pence told The Associated Press in August that he did not take any classified information with him when he left office.

Asked directly if he had retained any classified information upon leaving office, he said, “No, not to my knowledge.”

In a January interview with Fox Business, Pence described a “very formal process” used by his office to handle classified information as well as the steps taken by his lawyers to ensure none was taken with him.

“Before we left the White House, the attorneys on my staff went through all the documents at both the White House and our offices there and at the vice-president’s residence to ensure that any documents that needed to be turned over to the National Archives, including classified documents, were turned over. So we went through a very careful process in that regard,” Pence said.

Trump, Biden under scrutiny

The development comes as separate special counsels are investigating the retention of classified documents by both President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The Justice Department had previously stated in court filings that, besides investigating crimes related to the mishandling of national defence information and other documents, it was also looking into whether anyone committed obstruction in the Trump case, which saw federal officials engaged in a monthslong back-and-forth with Trump lawyers to retrieve documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

WATCH | Republicans pounce on Biden document revelations:

Special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents

A special counsel has been named to investigate U.S. President Joe Biden’s handling of two batches of classified documents after more sensitive government materials were found in his personal home.

Biden and the White House have said they are co-operating with any probes related to documents found at both his former office and his Wilmington, Del., residence.

Biden’s personal attorneys first discovered classified materials on Nov. 2, a week before the midterm elections, as they were clearing out an office Biden had used at the Penn Biden Center in Washington. Since that initial discovery, Biden’s team has adopted an accommodating approach to the investigation, even if they haven’t been completely transparent in public.

Possessing classified material is not in itself a criminal offence. While some government officials and contractors have been charged, others such as former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton were admonished in reports for carelessness but not subject to prosecution.

Defendants have been prosecuted for offences related to the three classifications of documents, in ascending order: confidential, secret and top secret. Top secret classification, according to the Justice Department, represents the type of information where “unauthorized disclosure reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”

Documents across the wide range of government agencies are classified for the purpose of national security. In 2010 Congress passed the Reducing Over-Classification Act to try and address the often confusing and complex process.