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The revelation Tuesday that classified documents were discovered at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana threatens to change the political and legal landscape under Justice Department probes of former President Donald Trump and President Biden mishandling government secrets.
A “small number” of classified documents were discovered in Mr. Pence’s home in Carmel, Indiana, according to letters his legal team sent to the National Archives and Records Administration.
In the political arena, the surprising discovery gives both sides cover as Mr. Biden’s allies can point to the fact that he and Mr. Pence immediately turned over documents found to be in their possession. That contrasts with Mr. Trump, who has insisted the documents are his personal property and repeatedly refused to give them back.
However, Mr. Pence’s situation also makes it more difficult to prosecute Mr. Trump, who is currently under criminal investigation for possessing classified documents.
“Each of these finds could make a singular prosecution of Trump seem more like selective prosecution,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University. “After all, it may be getting increasingly difficult to assemble a jury pool in Washington,” he said. “It is not clear who would be left after the question on the voir dire form ‘do you have classified material at home?’”
Federal law strictly forbids the removal or retention of classified documents or materials outside secured locations without authorization.
Kevin O’Brien, a white-collar criminal defense attorney and former Justice Department official, said the Pence and Biden discoveries make it seem as if the retention of secret documents is “normal.” That could be a problem for public perception if prosecutors decide to charge Mr. Trump.
“Ironically, the more violations we discover, even if they are inadvertent, the harder it might be to successfully prosecute Trump because the public and ultimately the jury may have a hard time distinguishing an inadvertent violation from an intentional one,” Mr. O’Brien said. “Biden and Pence may have given Trump a cover.”
One thing everyone in Washington seems to agree upon is that there must be more scrutiny on how classified documents are tracked and stored.
“I don’t know how this happened,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Clearly we have got a problem here. … Maybe we are over-classifying things. That may be part of the problem, but count me in for getting this fixed.”
Mr. Pence, who is a potential Republican 2024 presidential candidate, went public Tuesday with the discovery of government secrets stashed in his house.
In a letter sent last week to the National Archives and Record Administration, Mr. Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote that the documents “were inadvertently boxed and transported to the former vice president’s home at the end of the Trump administration.
