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The discovery of classified documents at the home of former US vice-president Mike Pence, following similar incidents involving Joe Biden and Donald Trump, is bringing new scrutiny to government procedures for handling and securing its most delicate secrets.
The justice department and FBI are looking into how about a dozen classified-marked papers came to be found last week in an unsecure location at Pence’s Indiana residence, two years after he and Trump left office.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has meanwhile appointed independent special counsels to investigate what is thought to be around a dozen documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and Pennsylvania office, and many thousands of papers seized by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last year.
The latest revelations have led to calls from politicians and analysts for a tightening of how classified documents are handled at the conclusion of a presidency, and a demand for more oversight of the federal agency responsible for securing and transporting them during the handover.
There are also questions whether the US has a problem with over-classification of materials given the number of documents so far uncovered in the possession of senior current and former elected officials.
“Clearly the process is broken,” Florida Republican congressman Mike Waltz, a member of the House armed services committee, told Fox News.
“We’ve got to take a hard look at GSA (general services administration) and how they and the intelligence community pack these documents [and] get them to wherever the president or vice-president is going.
