Doculed documents would have been “packed and inadvertently transported”. This new episode, after Donald Trump and Joe Biden, strengthens questions about general neglect in the American executive.
by Piotr Smolar (Washington, correspondent)
The soap opera of classified documents hosts a new protagonist. A dozen notes were found on January 16 in Carmel (Indiana) at the home of Mike Pence, former vice-president of Donald Trump (2017-2021), we learned on Tuesday January 24. According to lawyer Greg Jacob, who was one of the closest advisers of the Republican, Mike Pence had asked another lawyer to carry out checks in his personal archives, after the recent and same -kind revelations that embarrassed Joe Biden .
Doculed documents – which we know neither the degree of classification nor the content – have been placed in a trunk. They would have been “wrapped and inadvertently transported”, according to Greg Jacob, during the chaotic move organized between the assault of January 6, 2021 against the Capitol and the entrance of Joe Biden to the White House, two weeks later. Greg Jacob quickly wrote to the National Archives to inform them of this news.
The Ministry of Justice decided to dispatch Federal Police Agents (FBI), on January 19, to take possession of the two boxes containing the documents. That day, Mike Pence was in Washington to participate in the march of opponents of the right to abortion. As Joe Biden had done, the former vice-president wanted to show compliance with the rules and impeccable cooperation with the authorities.
Their reaction, on a procedural level, appears in total contrast to the attitude of Donald Trump, who knowingly won hundreds of documents after his departure from the White House then had subtracted them in the National Archives, which claimed them, Refusing to put them back to the FBI. Hence the police search to Mar-A-Lago, in August 2022, and the discovery of a very large number of notes, some of which included the highest possible classification.
“maybe ‘Are we overlapping certain things? “
Nevertheless, this new episode strengthens questions about general neglect in the entourage of former senior officials of the American executive. It also raises the question of the classification standards selected and their dissemination. “Perhaps we overlap certain things? It could be part of the problem,” noted the republican senator Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) on Fox News.
Michael Turner (Ohio), republican president of the intelligence committee in the House of Representatives, announced that he would ask the intelligence services to assess the documents seized at Mike Pence, as he had done For those found in Joe Biden’s reflection circle as well as in his residence in Delaware. His colleague James Comer (Kentucky), who chairs the control commission, underlined “the keen contrast” between the desire to cooperate posted by Mike Pence and the restraint of information by the White House.
You have 32.65% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.