Former VP Mike Pence won’t be charged over classified documents at Indiana home

Former Vice President Mike Pence will not be charged with mishandling classified information after the FBI closed its investigation into sensitive documents found in January at his Indiana home.

The Justice Department confirmed in a letter to Pence’s attorney that “no charges will be sought,” CNN reported Friday. 

A spokesman for Pence did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The news comes five days before Pence will enter the 2024 presidential race, joining an increasingly crowded field that includes his former boss, Donald Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A “small number” of potentially classified documents were found in four boxes at Pence’s home outside Indianapolis Jan. 16 and were retrieved by the FBI three days later. 

The former vice president had instructed his lawyers to sweep the home following revelations that President Biden improperly stored highly sensitive material at his former think tank office and his Wilmington, Del., home. 

Federal agents returned to the home Feb. 10 to conduct a further five-hour search, which yielded “one document with classified markings and six additional pages without such markings that were not discovered in the initial review by the vice president’s counsel,” Pence’s rep said at the time. 

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Pence made no excuses for keeping the documents at his home, telling an audience Jan. 27 at Florida International University in Miami: “While I was not aware that the classified documents were in our personal residence, let me be clear, those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence. Mistakes were made and I take full responsibility.”

This is a developing story