According to new reporting out from the Associated Press, former Vice President Mike Pence may have just officially joined the petty squad after he appeared to take a thinly-veiled dig at his old boss and ex-president, Donald Trump, when he publicly confirmed that he never too classified materials from the White House when Trump’s presidential term was over.
The remarks came from the former VP during a recent new interview with the publication that took place just short of two weeks after the news broke that Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida, had been raided by FBI agents who were executing a search warrant handed down by the Biden Department of Justice and signed off on by Attorney General Merrick Garland himself. Recent reports, in combination with the actual search warrant document itself, have confirmed that agents were searching for and ultimately seized numerous boxes of top-secret, classified, and federally protected documents and materials from the former president’s estate that he now calls home — leaving Donald J. Trump under investigation by the DOJ for multiple possible violations of the Espionage Act.
Trump himself has continually defended his choice to remove the materials from the White House and relocate them to his personal residence by claiming that he had personally “declassified” the material before taking it with him to Mar-a-Lago. However, according to a recent report from CNN, more than a dozen of Trump’s own former White House officials have vehemently disputed that claim.
During the new interview with the Associated Press, Trump’s former right-hand man was asked point-blank if he had ever removed classified documents, materials, or information from the Naval Observatory upon the end of the 45 president’s White House term.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Pence did not mince his words.
“No, not to my knowledge.”
The former vice president noted that he did not want to jump to any premature conclusions with regard to the FBI search or the investigation that’s raging against his former boss, stating, I honestly don’t want to prejudge it before until we know all the facts.”
The interview delved deeper into the former VP’s questions regarding the “unprecedented” Justice Department move against a former US president. The concern that millions of Americans felt is only going to be resolved with daylight,” he said. “I know that’s not customary in an investigation. But this is unprecedented action by the Justice Department, and I think it merits an unprecedented transparency.”
Read the full piece from the Associated Press here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
