Washington: Following the discovery of sensitive government documents by Mike Pence's attorneys last month, the FBI found another document with classified markings at his Indiana residence on Friday.
Devin O'Malley, a Pence adviser, reported that the Department of Justice carried out a "five-hour thorough and unrestricted search" and removed "one document with classified markings and six additional pages without such markings that were not discovered in the initial review by the vice president's counsel."
Pence was subpoenaed in a separate investigation into former President Donald Trump's attempts to rig the 2020 election.
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The search is being described as consensual after discussions between Pence's representatives and the Justice Department. Pence is also considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Pence has joined President Joe Biden and Donald Trump as the third current or former top US official to have their homes searched by FBI agents for sensitive documents.
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Pence and Biden's willingness to allow the FBI to search their homes and to present themselves as fully cooperative is indicative of their desire to avoid the controversy that surrounded Trump last year and necessitated the Justice Department obtaining a warrant in order to inspect his Florida property.
On Friday afternoon, as the FBI was inside the house, police closed off the road outside Pence's neighbourhood in Carmel, which is located just north of Indianapolis. Just after 2:00 p.m., they were seen leaving. Following the birth of their second and third grandchildren, Vice President Pence and his wife were out of the country visiting family on the West Coast.
During the search, a member of Vice President Pence's legal team was present, and the FBI was given what was described as unrestricted access to look for documents marked as classified, documents that might be classified but aren't marked that way, and any other documents covered by the Presidential Records Act.
Pence, according to O'Malley, has instructed his legal team to keep working with the DOJ and "to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter," according to O'Malley.
A "small number of documents" that had been "inadvertently boxed and transported" to Pence's Indiana home at the end of the Trump administration had already been confiscated by the FBI, according to Pence's lawyer.
When contacted for comment, the Justice Department did not answer the phone right away.
Investigations into the discovery of classified documents at Trump's Florida estate, Biden's Delaware home, and his former Washington office are being conducted independently by special counsels. In refusing to turn over the documents prior to the FBI seizure, officials are attempting to determine whether Trump or anyone on his team criminally obstructed the investigation. When executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August of last year, the FBI found more than 100 documents marked classified.
The National Archives requested and received documents that had been shipped to a law office in Boston by the president's personal attorney after it learned about the discovery of the classified papers at Biden's former Washington office, according to emails that were made public late Friday.
The Boston documents weren't thought to contain any top-secret information.
The circumstances surrounding the cases of Biden and Pence differ significantly from those surrounding Trump.
According to Pence's attorney Greg Jacob, during the uproar over the discovery of classified documents at Biden's home and former private office, Pence had requested a review by his attorneys of the records kept at his home "out of an abundance of caution." The Pence papers were kept safe and reported to the National Archives after being found on January 16 among four boxes that had been moved to Pence's residence during the transition, according to Jacob. Agents of the FBI then gathered them.
The majority of the materials discovered in the boxes came from Pence's home at the Naval Observatory.
Most of the information discovered in the boxes came from Pence's former home at the Naval Observatory, where he resided while serving as vice president. Other materials came from a drawer in the West Wing office.
