The Justice Department has closed its investigation into former vice president Mike Pence’s possession of potentially sensitive government documents after leaving office.
The Justice Department has closed its investigation into former vice president Mike Pence’s possession of potentially sensitive government documents after leaving office and will not pursue charges, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A Justice Department official sent a one-page letter to Pence’s lawyer Thursday informing him of the decision, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a federal investigation.
The Justice Department declined to comment. A spokesman for Pence, who is expected to enter the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination next week, said the former vice president was “pleased but not surprised.”
The investigation into Pence’s potential mishandling of government materials launched earlier this year, amid a much broader probe of former president Donald Trump’s handling of classified material and the separate discovery that President Biden had some classified documents in his possession after his time in the Senate and as vice president, before he became commander in chief.
Pence attorney Greg Jacob said in January that Pence had initiated a search of records stored in his Indiana home “out of an abundance of caution,“ to examine whether he — like Trump and Biden — potentially kept any records that should have stayed with the government.
