Oh, goody. It turns out that the classified-material virus is spreading, and it’s still a bipartisan disease — at least among politicos:
A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house in Indiana.
The classified documents were discovered at Pence’s new home in Carmel, Indiana, by a lawyer for Pence in the wake of the revelations about classified material discovered in President Joe Biden’s private office and residence, the sources said. The discovery comes after Pence has repeatedly said he did not have any classified documents in his possession.
What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here? Yes, presidents and VPs have custodial authority of classified material while in office. They have work and personal papers that belong to them when they leave office, although the former at least are supposed to be at least copied to the National Archive. Any classified material for which these office-holders have custodial authority has to be returned at the end of their terms, and needless to say, plenty of other rules are in place forbidding the transfer of such material to unsecured and unauthorized places.
Like private homes, garages, bathroom e-mail servers, and socks. For instance.
Perhaps we should call a moratorium on record retention altogether until we digest what exactly is transpiring here. Alternatively or perhaps even in tandem, Congress has to take action in dealing with this problem by either amending the Espionage Act to allow for exceptions, or enforcing it.
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Just a couple of hours before this news broke, Politico reported that Democrats had already decided to work with Republicans on this issue:
Some Democratic committee chairs, while declining to criticize Biden, have said they want to look at the handling of classified documents broadly. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) earlier this month called for a briefing related to both the Biden and Trump documents. He told reporters on Monday that he hoped for an update soon.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said his panel was also looking broadly at the retention of records. Peters, who also runs Democrats’ campaign arm, said he wanted to deal with the issue “for presidencies in general. And we’re going to try to do that in a nonpoliticized way.”
This will throw more fuel on that fire, and more incentives for both parties to work together on it.
[more to come]
