Former Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that the discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president compared to the FBI’s unprecedented search of former President Trump’s private residence proved a “double standard.”
“It’s just incredibly frustrating to me,” Pence said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show. “But the original sin here was the massive overreach.”
Trump is under investigation for more than 100 classified documents to his private residence in Mar-a-Lago, which FBI agents executed a search warrant for in August. The search appeared to be the first of its kind, which Pence said was a “massive overreach” by the FBI.
Pence said this search created a standard that the FBI could execute a search warrant at a former president’s personal residence. He also said that the Biden administration should appoint the same special counsel for investigation in Biden’s papers, instead of a U.S. attorney, as they did for Trump.
“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 have no words right now,” Pence said.
“But the willingness of the national media to just turn away and turn a deaf ear to the Biden, to the disclosures that when Vice President Biden left office, he left with classified documents as well, it just shows you, it’s like I said before,” Pence added. “If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”
Biden’s attorney discovered the classified documents in a private office in November and immediately notified the National Archives, which took possession of the documents the next morning. Since then, the incident was passed on to the Justice Department for further investigation that the White House is cooperating with, Richard Sauber, special counsel to Biden, said.
One of the differences between the classified documents found at Biden’s and Trump’s private locations was that Biden’s attorney alerted the National Archives about the discovery, while Trump held on to the documents until the search was carried out in August.
“What they have unleashed now has the threat of coming back on them,” Pence said.