WASHINGTON: After Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Mike Pence has in turn been swept up in the White House filing business: the former Republican vice president notified Congress on Tuesday about the discovery of classified documents in his home.

“Mike Pence today notified us of the discovery of classified documents at his home in Indiana,” influential Republican House Representative James Comer said in a statement.

Former vice president Donald Trump (2017-2021) “agreed to fully cooperate with the Congressional investigation,” added the elected official, who oversaw the parliamentary inquiry opened after the discovery of files of this kind with the Democratic President.

Attorney Mike Pence told the National Archives of the discovery last week of “a small number of documents marked ‘secret’ in a box accidentally transported to the former vice president’s home at the end of the previous administration”.

Mike Pence is “not aware of their whereabouts” but has ordered a search of his belongings following the discovery of such documents on Joe Biden, Me Greg Jacob added in a letter reproduced in American media.

The ultra-conservative, who is toying with the idea of ​​running for president in 2024, “understood the importance of protecting sensitive information” and “immediately stored these documents in a safe place” pending transfer to the National Archives, according to his lawyers.

Special prosecutor

In the United States, a 1978 law required the president and vice president of America to send all emails, letters, and other work documents to the National Archives. Another law, on espionage, prohibits storing documents classified as confidential in unauthorized and unsafe places.

After being leaked to the media, the White House acknowledged that such files dating back to vice president Joe Biden from 2009 to 2017, but also from his long career in the Senate, had been found in one of his former Washington offices. family home in Wilmington (Delaware, east).

The case is an embarrassment as Democrats have not shied away from criticizing Donald Trump, the subject of a judicial investigation for keeping an entire box of documents when he left Washington in 2021.

To recover him, federal police have conducted a spectacular search this summer of his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

Wanting to silence suspicions of bias, the Justice Department on January 13 entrusted the investigation into the Joe Biden dossier to an independent special prosecutor, as it did in November for Donald Trump.

Asked by reporters during a news conference about another topic, Secretary Merrick Garland declined to comment on the Mike Pence file on Tuesday.

“Plain”

Despite these precautions, Republicans continue to criticize the White House’s dribbling communications. “Mike Pence’s transparency contrasts with the attitude of collaborator Joe Biden (…), who continues to withhold information,” James Comer said in a press release.

At a news conference, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called for “explaining” the case. “What was a political issue” to Republicans, then to Democrats, he argues, is now “a matter of national security for the country.”

As for Donald Trump, he shared a message of support for his former vice president, with whom he has cooled off since the attack on the Capitol two years ago.

“Mike Pence is innocent, he has never committed dishonesty in his life. Leave him alone,” the billionaire, who will seek a new mandate in 2024, wrote on his Truth Social network.