Lawyer Finds Classified Documents in Mike Pence’s Indiana Home
“Pence asked his lawyer to conduct the search of his home out of an abundance of caution, and the attorney began going through four boxes stored at Pence’s house last week, finding a small number of documents with classified markings.”
Why. Why do they do this? Why.
CNN reported that Mike Pence’s lawyer found classified documents in the former vice president’s Indiana home:
The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house in Indiana.
The classified documents were discovered at Pence’s new home in Carmel, Indiana, by a lawyer for Pence in the wake of the revelations about classified material discovered in President Joe Biden’s private office and residence, the sources said. The discovery comes after Pence has repeatedly said he did not have any classified documents in his possession.
It is not yet clear what the documents are related to or their level of sensitivity or classification. Pence’s team plans to notify Congress on Tuesday.
Pence asked his lawyer to conduct the search of his home out of an abundance of caution, and the attorney began going through four boxes stored at Pence’s house last week, finding a small number of documents with classified markings, the sources said.
“Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,” wrote Greg Jacob, Pence’s designated representative to the National Archive.
It seems everyone does this. Why must they all do this?
Pence had the right idea to ask his lawyer to look through his home. I wonder if Cheney, Bush, Obama, Gore, and Clinton will do the same.
It also shows that Trump was right: The FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago was unnecessary and inappropriate.
The FBI flashed their badges and probably acted like Andy’s Burt Macklin persona (watch Parks and Rec!), raiding and ruining Trump’s property.
Finding documents at Pence’s house weakens the government’s argument against Trump. It also weakens any argument against the ones found with Biden.
I know I’m not the only one who thinks the Democrats wanted to use the classified documents in Biden’s possession to kick him out in 2024 or maybe even sooner.
Everyone does it.
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I think someone is playing 3D chess.
With due consideration to the precautionary principle, this calls for a raid… of every elected official and bureaucrat’s home, abode, office, stationary and mobile, past, present, and progressive.
So much this.
Is anyone surprised? Obviously there isn’t a lot of care when cleaning out the offices of former officials.
Remember that classification is really to keep the American Public from learning the Truth. The Chinese, Russians, Saudis and Iranians already know this stuff.
Note well that the elite can’t be bothered to search their own houses, the places they live, to find the stuff they possess. No, they hire lawyers to do that for them. And oh, counselor, as long as you’re here, the rosebushes desperately need pruning.
I miss the good old days, when the FBI planted only drugs and child porn on their victims.
In this context it actually is the right idea to have the lawyers handle it.
What I find myself wondering is how did he end up with stuff? I could see Trump declassing and keeping hands on the collusion investigation stuff, but Pence?
Are they all just really sloppy about document storage and handling? Is everything under the sun, including stupid things classified? Is this all OBE stuff that just didn’t get tracked to the disposal properly?
Seriously, wth is going on here?
What’s going on is RINO Pence has sold us out again.
And stand by for Mitt Romney to ‘discover’ classified documents to further take the heat off Biden stealing documents when he was a Senator.
Yes that’s exactly it, “we all do it”, but President Trumps was really evil amd should be punished
So far, nothing has changed my opinion of Pence as being Kindly Senator Palpatine.
Always gotta keep an eye on the quiet ones.
What would be found at Nancy Pelosi’s house?
7,000$ refrigerator
Full of hammers.
And ice cream. The hammers are to split the frozen bananas.
Or Adam Schitts closet
Holy Moses, what is the purpose of having classified documents when it seems like every government politician seems to have a cache of classified documents in random boxes in their homes or offices. Might as well just declassify the documents and be done with it as classification doesn’t seem to really matter. The only people that it keeps from seeing the documents is the public. And for some reason I’m thinking that’s the only reason they classify these documents. Otherwise, it’s just free-for-all where these documents (and copies thereof) end up.
“Holy Moses, what is the purpose of having classified documents… ?”
– Keep inconvenient people from seeing them: you, the wrong committees, journolists (actual), operatives with bylines who work for the other guys…
– Ancillary, or incidental crime to hold over people’s heads to get them to do what we want.
– Make work for our certified, official, “classified document handling system” friends. Only they can do the things, because classified. Doesn’t have to work, work, like the US ACA sign-up web site.
Any of those is more than enough reason to do it.
Remember that certain documents relating the JFK assassinating and MLK are STILL classified! I find it VERY hard to believe that after all these years there is anything in them that would endanger national security.
Depends on what you mean by “endanger”, “national”, “security” and for whom.
There’s a great post Web 1.0 meme / riff on how companies are formed to make life extra-wonderful for some, certain people within them. Everybody else…
Any analog in The Nomenklature, Overlord class, or WEF invited attendees is… interesting.
LMFAO
Much more likely the Clintons will suffer a mysterious house fire…in one room…doing no damage elsewhere…
Perhaps a late night FBI raid to Cheney, Bush, Obama, Gore, and Clinton’s offices and homes and any other places they might harbor documents is in order. Ransack the places to make sure that there are no classified documents lurking around in anyone’s boxes of papers or left lying around in an insecure manner.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Jimmy Carter still has some lying around.
It is rather humorous how this nincompoops, in their rush to get Trump, only expose themselves. Perhaps we should be demanding a thorough search of all elected officials homes?
You’d think Republicans and Democrats could unite on bringing this nonsense to an end. But you’d be wrong. This is a privilege of the elite and nothing will be done.
When I handled classified documents decades ago I was expected to keep track of them, store them properly and turn them back in when they were no longer needed. You know, like a responsible adult. Apparently that’s just for the little people.
And the repositories where these documents were stored and issued from were required to hold regular audits where every document had to be accounted for. Don’t they do this anymore?
Doing it and enforcing it are two different things.
They do it for the millions of workers. It keeps stuff from leaking out. There are so few at the top that it doesn’t matter much if they opt out.
The higher up on the totem pole a person is the more need to know they have which means means access to the most sensitive information. Opting out of the rules is far less acceptable for those with access to the highest level of classification.
The damage that can occur for a release of operational info v strategic info is incomparable. We, rightly IMO, crush the ‘little’ people for breaches. We must do the same to the ‘important’ people for their far more serious breaches. For an example if nothing else.
In retrospect, it’s clear that Hillary should have been prosecuted (for sentient person who had a doubt)
“Don’t they do this anymore?”
Apparently not, at least for these people, these docs, and these uses. If they ever did.
More than enough people hereabouts with controlled info handling experience have spoken up that we know it’s doable, and how.
Apparently we have no responsible adults running the country and it’s a free for all with the classified documents.
You can’t spare mental bandwidth to follow a bunch of rules when you’re concentrating on making all that graft, and retaining your office so you can keep on making all that graft.
It’s common practice at the top. The stuff isn’t dangerous to national security but the media want clickbait to keep you tuned in.
Not dangerous because (1) it’s just boring stuff, nothing useful and (2) any risk isn’t multiplied by millions when top officials do it.
You want to keep the millions from doing it. No working at home etc.
THEY DO NOT GET TO MAKE THAT DETERMINATION.
If they think something is unnecessarily classified, they MAKE A REQUEST that it be unclassified. They don’t get to just ignore the classification.
His point is that vast amounts of documentation is unnecessarily classified, to the point that people handling it know this, assume it, and get alert fatigue. I’ve seen it working in healthtech and fintech.
It may not be right, but it is understandable. The system only functions at all because document handlers routinely ignore the classified materials handling rules. If every such rule were followed to the letter the entire bureaucracy would jam up instantly.
That may not be a bad thing, arguably, but the solution is to dial the amount of classification way down.
And, again, THEY DO NOT GET TO DETERMINE THAT.
This is just the Important People deciding that it’s too hard to follow the rules they put the Little People in jail over, so they can just ignore them whenever they feel like it.
The ‘solution’ is to actually enforce the rules, and if the system doesn’t work, then they are forced to change it.
Acting like it’s OK for them to just arbitrarily ignore rules whenever they feel like it ‘so the system works’ is idiotic.
Ha ha ha! I bet you think they should do the same thing to the Constitution!
Over classified information is a separate issue. I don’t disagree that is a real problem. The fact remains that the rules are made abundantly clear in the granting of a clearance of every type and when receiving an ‘in brief’ to be read onto the information.
It’s not that hard to comply. I did it for decades. It’s a pain in the ass sometimes for sure. Late night/weekend phone call to come onto post, go the SCIF to view the info and take whatever actions/planning steps required. Would have been totes easier to have the crap printed and scanned to my home CPU to do on the couch. If I and literally the many tens of thousands of others can be bothered to follow the rules for handling classified docs then our civilian leadership must be accountable for failing to do the same.
If not then folks begin to wonder why they shouldn’t violate the rules as well, especially with far less sensitive info that’s probably over classified anyway. A dangerous precedent will be set if no consequences follow.
Rightly said. If the people at the top find it “too hard” to comply, they can always resign their posts and get a job they’re qualified for, like selling vacuum cleaners. None of them were forcibly drafted into the jobs; many of them spent months crisscrossing the country begging to be picked.
Exactly, This is just the arrogant entitlement of the Important People arbitrarily deciding they don’t have to follow the laws.
I had a TS/SCI clearance. If they found classified documents in my house OF ANY KIND I would have been court martialed and thrown in prison.
Ha ha.
You said they were qualified to sell vacuum cleaners. Not only funny, but kind and generous.
“If not then folks begin to wonder why they shouldn’t violate the rules as well, especially with far less sensitive info that’s probably over classified anyway.”
Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.
–JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
You can’t spare mental bandwidth to follow a bunch of rules when you’re concentrating on making all that graft, and retaining your office so you can keep on making all that graft.
Sorry, this came out in the wrong place. Rerouting…
Don’t trust any of this stuff.
Hmm . . . Maybe it was Pfizer’s or Moderna’s secret formula . . .
Bullshit.
Pence is a snake, and he’s been bought off to get Biden off the hook so they can pretend this is just ‘something Vice Presidents do’, so they can stop talking about the documents he stole when he was a SENATOR.
If that keeps being an issue, stand by for Bitch McConnell or Mitt Romney’s lawyer to ‘find’ classified documents in their house to get Biden off the hook.
I am so sick of the RINO sellouts.
Interesting how this deep stater had other deep staters working in his office when he was VP and none figured the is out until after BUYden gets caught. There are no coincidences in DC.
“Everyone does it”
Apparently, though they shouldn’t be! Who’s going to be next to have classified docs where they shouldn’t? Pelosi maybe (wouldn’t put it past her), what’s his name that had the fling with a chinese spy perhaps? Are we going to find out that nobody who handles these documents treats them with safety & security they deserve?
One question: {naïveté} How is it that so many who “dedicate their loves to public service”, have huge homes, several homes, or several huge homes?
Senators, congressmen, judges, et al, seem to live quite extensive material lives.
Harry Truman — ‘Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I’ll show you a crook.’
Curiously, Trump is the only president in my lifetime who lost net wealth over his term in service… or so I have been assured.
Another thing about Truman. When he left the White House, he threw some suitcases into the trunk of his Chrysler, he and Bess climbed in, he put it in gear, and drove back to Missouri. No pomp, no 46-vehicle motorcade, no helicopters, just Harry, Bess, and the Chrysler.
Pence isn’t particularly rich. He left office worth about $1M, half of which was in the form of a pension. The money for his house came from a book deal he’d just signed.
Thanks for the clarification on Pence.
I think we have a new placeholder for most inept government agency, the national archives. For an agency tasked with managing these documents it is obvious by now they can not handle this task in its current form and appear to have failed for decades.
Substitute out the word “documents” as necessary and you’ll be describing nearly every government agency.
From what I’m given to understand is that that National Archives are just a huge fustercluck and mess when it comes to holding classified documents. Or any documents regardless of classification for that matter. Items are listed in on inventories that are not there. Documents missing. Whole boxes of papers nowhere to be found. And none of it likely ever to be found. Nobody knows what happened to them or where they are. They’re just not there. So it matters little if the Biden regime returns the few documents they’ve found. Or whether Pence does the same. There are still potentiality hundreds if not thousands of documents classified or not missing from the National Archives. And that’s never going to change.
LONE GUNMEN’S OFFICE
Byers opens the metal tube and pours its contents into a vial. He tests it as Frohike, Langley and Mulder watches and waits. Byers punches into the computer. A graph appears. He looks at Mulder.
MULDER: What? What is it?
BYERS: It’s deionized water. It’s nothing more than that.
We have a new poster child for that ending scene in the Indiana Jones movie.
Well now, the raids should happen with Cheney, Bush, Gore, Obama and if they don’t voluntarily have their lawyers ‘sort’ the documents, then FBI raids are in order, right?
I would ALSO like to point out that when the FBI raided Trump, this traitorous RINO sack of crap gave MULTIPLE interviews in which he declared over and over ‘I NEVER DID THAT I NEVER TOOK ANY CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS’.
Yet the second his buddy Droolin Joe gets caught he rushes out to his defense ‘oh hey guys I found some too, everybody does it!’
They are so pathetically transparent.
A: To many things are classified.
2: No one in the top levels gives a crap about the rules. Especially considering I thing Mike Pence might be the rule followingest of the bunch.
Ah, so they burned down Atlanta. No big deal, everyone does it.
Why stop at POTUS and VEEP? What about Cabinet members, especially State and DOD, also Thoroughly Modern Milley and other 4 star brass hats. This may be more wide spread than any one knows. Apparently at the upper most level of gummint security is a joke.
The difference between Trump’s possession of classified docs and those of Pence and Biden (aside from the fact Trump was POTUS, and that in his possession as an FPOTUS they’re considered “presumptively declassified”) is that Trump and the FBI knew the documents were in Trump’s possession, and their storage was considered secure by the FBI after Trump followed the FBI’s suggestion/direction to add another lock to a door. Trump, because he knew what was in his possession, allowed the FBI to inspect the storage space and complied with their directions with respect to security.
This is a far cry from being ignorant of the possession of classified docs (which excuses nothing-there are two classes offenses with regard to classified docs, intentional exposure/espionage and unintentional/negligent exposure). It is impossible to assure that something not known to have been in one’s possession was kept secure. Pence and Joe (as well as Hillary, with her home-based server) are guilty at least of negligence with regard to the classified docs in their possession.
What about the Dynamic Duo of Swalwell & Schiff?
How about everyone, past and present, on all of the “intelligence ” committees
During my short stint as a gov’t employee in the 80’s, security was formost on everyone’s mind. We couldn’t have a hard drive in a PC without it being removeable and stored in a safe at night or be in a secured area. And we weren’t directly handling any classified documents or data.
Everyday people have gone to prison for far far less than what these bozos have done.
Politicians, regardless of stripes, believe and act as if the rules and laws do not apply to them. They should be held accountable.
How is the National Archive, which is supposed to track the whereabouts of all these documents, so unaware of the location or even existence of these documents?