Former Vice President Mike Pence has taken aim at what he says is a “double standard” in how both the media and Department of Justice responded to the discovery of classified documents at a Washington think tank that President Joe Biden worked at before taking office.
Trump is currently being investigated by the DOJ over his handling of the documents.
“The willingness of the national media to just turn away and turn a deaf ear ... to the disclosures that when Vice President Biden left office he left with classified documents as well, it just shows you,” Pence said. “It’s like I said before; if they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”
“Equal treatment in the law is at the very center of the expectation of the American people and of our history and our tradition,” Pence continued.
Biden had previously used the office from mid-2017 until the start of his 2020 presidential campaign.
Biden Lawyer Confirms Classified Documents Found
The White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of the discovery and the agency retrieved the materials the following day, Sauber said.According to Biden’s lawyer, the documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, just days before the midterm elections, but he did not disclose the findings until nearly two months later.
In a statement to NBC News on Tuesday, the White House Counsel’s Office declined to state why it had waited more than two months to publicly disclose the discovery of the documents.
“This is an ongoing process under review by [the Department of Justice], so we are going to be limited in what we can say at this time,” Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, told NBC News.
“But we are committed to doing this the right way, and we will provide further details when and as appropriate,” Sams said.
During his interview on Tuesday, Pence also branded the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago “a massive overreach” and “deeply troubling.”
“This double standard is just as troubling. You know, there’s that old saying that if they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all ... But having now created that standard and now abandoned that standard when the current president of the United States is found to have had classified documents in his possession after leaving office, I think it just, I have no words right now,” Pence added.
‘These Documents Were Definitely Not Declassified’
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also said Monday that the discovery “just shows that they were trying to be political to President Trump,” in reference to the Biden administration and the DOJ, which has claimed that Trump violated a number of laws when he took documents with him from the White House to his South Florida home.
Trump has said he declassified the materials when he left office and has not been charged with any crime.
Elsewhere, newly appointed House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) also alleged double standards in how classified documents were handled.
“Chairman Comer is concerned that NARA’s inconsistent application of the Presidential Records Act and treatment of classified records held by former President Trump and President Biden raise questions about potential political bias at the agency,” the statement reads.
Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives and have signaled that they will conduct new investigations into Biden and his family members, including his son Hunter Biden.
