Trump’s team also believes the Biden and Pence revelations support their argument that this should not treated as a criminal matter but rather as an administrative review of the White House’s process for handling classified material overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the source said. “They are all now linked in a way,” the source familiar with the thinking of Trump’s legal team said, referring to Pence, Biden and Trump. Biden’s team discovered documents in multiple locations between November and January.īut Trump allies also embraced the Pence news and believe it further blurs the lines between the three cases. The FBI searched Biden’s home only recently, months after the first classified material was found. “It appears Pence has followed a very similar initial process to Biden in terms of a voluntary review of materials and prompt disclosure to the proper authorities when they were found, all of which were made public by a media report,” the source said. When Biden’s team found classified documents at his Washington, DC, think tank office in November, they immediately notified the National Archives, which in turn notified the Justice Department, though the discovery was not publicly disclosed for weeks. Pence turned over about a dozen documents marked classified to the FBI shortly after discovering them. Meanwhile, Biden officials were relieved by the news, according to sources who told CNN that the Pence news “turns down the temperature on this being a Biden-only story.”Īnother source familiar with the investigation likened the steps Pence took upon the discovery of classified documents to those taken by Biden. While the circumstances are different in each case, members of Trump’s legal team believe these developments will make it harder for prosecutors to justify bringing criminal charges against any of them, the source said. On one hand, Trump’s legal team views the news of classified documents found at Pence’s home as a positive development for the former president, believing the discovery, coupled with Biden’s own ongoing special counsel investigation related to his handling of classified documents, changes the dynamics of the Justice Department’s investigation into the former president, according to a source familiar with the matter. Pence on Jan.Advisers to former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden jumped on news of classified documents being found in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, with both viewing it as a helpful defense in their own documents investigations.īiden’s team continues to draw a distinction between him and Trump when it comes to their handling of classified documents, and the parallels between the Pence and Biden cases have served to sharpen that argument in the initial fallout.īut sources familiar with both cases acknowledged Tuesday new revelations about sensitive materials found at Pence’s home help their cause. While Pence allies believe that he can forge a coalition that brings together movement conservatives, white Evangelical Christians and more establishment-minded Republicans, Trump’s attacks on Pence have made him deeply unpopular with large swaths of Trump’s loyal base, potentially complicating his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. “Weakness arouses evil, and the magnitude of evil sweeping across Ukraine speaks volumes about this president.” “It’s no coincidence that Russia waited until 2022 to invade Ukraine,” Pence said, according to excerpts. Still, he joined the oft-stated view of Trump and others in the Republican Party Friday evening in blaming President Joe Biden for Putin’s actions, accusing the current president of having “squandered the deterrence that our administration put in place to keep Putin and Russia from even trying to redraw international boundaries by force.”
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