Pence calls out ‘double standards’ after discovery of Biden documents

Former Vice President Mike Pence called out the “double standard” he believed was at play and suggested that President Joe Biden would get off easier with the Mar-a-Lago raid compared to former President Donald Trump to keep secret documents.

Speaking to Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, Pence said the FBI’s August search of Trump’s Florida home and club for government documents was a “massive overstatement” and a “massive overreaction.”

“But having created that standard now, and now having abandoned that standard when it was discovered that the current President of the United States had classified documents in his possession after leaving office, I think it’s fair, I have im No words right now. It’s just incredibly frustrating for me,” Pence said.

“But the original sin here was the massive exaggeration,” added the former vice president, although he noted that the media “hid it”.

Former Vice President Mike Pence called out the “double standard” he believed was at play and suggested that President Joe Biden would get off easier with the Mar-a-Lago raid compared to former President Donald Trump to keep secret documents

Hewitt chimed in, saying he believes the kerfuffle over Trump and Biden’s classified documents was “nonsense.”

“Every former president ends up with a mix-up in the newspapers, it just happens,” the radio show host said.

But Hewitt also argued that since the Justice Department had appointed a special counsel to oversee the Trump investigation, the same person should have been assigned access to the Biden documents.

“I can’t for my life understand how the same problem for people who are both running for president — Biden and Trump — doesn’t end with the same special counsel,” Hewitt said. “I find it outrageous that it didn’t go, the Biden Papers matter didn’t go to Jack Smith,” he added, referring to Trump’s special counsel.

Pence said he “couldn’t agree more”.

“It worries me deeply, but again last summer’s action was wrong,” he repeated.

“But the willingness of the national media to just walk away and turn a deaf ear to Biden — to the revelations that Vice President Biden, when he left office, he also left with classified documents, only shows you, as I said, if they didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all,” Pence said.

President Joe Biden said he was “surprised” that classified documents were found in his former office at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, DC

The DC office building where 10 classified documents were found in a former office of current President Joe Biden

Ever since the White House said Monday Biden’s lawyers found 10 documents with classified markings in an old Washington, DC think tank office, the president has been peppered with questions about the discovery.

Biden was questioned about the documents at the head of his trilateral news conference Tuesday in Mexico City alongside Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The President said he was “surprised” to find out classified documents were discovered in a box in a locked cupboard. But said his lawyers did what they should have done.

“They immediately called the archives – immediately called the archives and turned them over to the archives,” the president said.

The documents were discovered on November 2nd and turned over to the archives on November 3rd.

Biden said he didn’t know the contents of the documents and his attorneys advised him not to ask about them.

“And we are fully cooperating with the review,” the president added.

Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland has US Attorney John Lausch from Chicago examine the documents.

Former President Donald Trump wants President Joe Biden’s home to be “searched” after classified papers were found in a locked closet in an old office Biden used

The collection of documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago in August. Pence said the raid was “massive exaggeration” and a “massive overreaction”.

At the same time, the president’s Democratic allies are pushing back Republicans like Pence who compare Trump and Biden’s handling of classified documents.

“Our classification system is in place to protect our most important national security secrets, and we expect to be informed as part of our constitutional oversight responsibilities as to what happened at both Mar-a-Lago and the Biden office,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Senator Mark Warner, said in a statement Tuesday.

“From what we know so far, the latter involves finding documents with marks and turning them over, which is certainly different than a months-long effort to preserve material actively sought by the government,” Warner said. “But again, that’s why we need to be informed.”

Pence has continued to defend Trump, although the two men have fallen out over Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The former vice president briefly referenced Hewitt’s program when discussing everything he accomplished during the Trump-Pence administration, “which obviously didn’t end well,” Pence said.

The Presidential Records Act requires all official and classified White House documents to be kept in the National Archives building