Secret documents found at Mike Pence's home.

 

Mike Pence. Fox News/Getty/New York Times.

Secret documents have been found at Mike Pence's Indiana home. Fox News. Pence's team found the documents themselves on January 16th. Pence informed the National Archives about two boxes full of documents that were potentially classified, along with two boxes full of Vice Presidential documents. The documents were secured and then picked up by the FBI. No documents were found at Pence's think tank offices. Pence is said to be cooperating with the FBI and National Archives. 

My Comment:

I have said in the past that both the Trump and Biden scandals were fairly minor as every President and Vice President likely had secret documents in their homes. This discovery seems to confirm that pretty clearly. I am sure that if former surviving presidents and vice presidents were searched along with Biden, Trump and Pence, the same thing would have happened. 

Pence seems to be handling the situation fairly well. He's the one that discovered the documents (or at least his staff) and sent the documents to the FBI as soon as possible. Taking the documents in the first place was obviously a mistake but Pence seems to be trying to nip any scandal in the bud. 

However, Pence has the same problem Joe Biden has and one that Donald Trump did not. Vice Presidents do not have declassification ability so he can't claim that these documents were unclassified unless he can prove that Trump (or current day Biden) did so for him. That seems very unlikely to say the least. 

The other issue is that these secret documents have all been found in confirmed or potential 2024 presidential candidates. Given the fact that Pence and his staff found these documents I don't think this was a plot against him, while the cases against Biden and Trump seem to have been crafted to keep them from running in 2024. Still, it's strange that it only seems to be happening to people that could be running in 2024. 

I don't think this will hurt Pence's political ambitions. For one thing, I don't think Pence has a realistic chance of being elected in a national race. Pence burned his bridges with the MAGA community after January 6th. And the RINO's and moderates aren't going to vote a guy that was Donald Trump's #2. And given the reaction to the troll post that falsely announced that he was running in 2024 I don't think he has a realistic chance of being president, or even the candidate in 2024. 

Even with that though, this scandal seems incredibly minor, but I said that about the Trump and Biden document issues as well. At least with Biden the issue has legs because some of the documents were from his Senate days. But given the minor nature of the issue and the fact that Pence did everything he could to correct the issue I don't see this being a major problem for him.