Mike Pence’s former chief of staff on Wednesday said that an FBI search of the former vice president’s home will likely happen in the future.
Marc Short told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Pence will grant the FBI complete access to his residence, similar to how President Biden’s legal team handled the FBI’s requests to search.
News outlets last week reported that the FBI is planning to search Pence’s home after classified documents were found at his Indiana residence in January.
“There have been conversations about a consensual search to be conducted, and I presume that’s not too far off into the future,” Short told Tapper.
Officials last month announced they had discovered classified documents in one of Biden’s private offices last fall. Since that first announcement, more classified documents have been discovered in Biden’s residence near Wilmington, Del. The discovery of these documents came months after the FBI searched former President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, where officials recovered more than 100 documents marked with different degrees of classification.
Short said that the FBI’s retrieving of classified documents from Biden and Pence demonstrated a “double standard,” pointing out that it took weeks for the FBI to go to Biden’s home while the FBI went to Pence’s Indiana home the same day the documents were discovered.
He said that the discovery of classified documents in Pence’s home will not affect whether the former vice president will run for the White House in 2024, but added he would not be making an announcement anytime soon.
“I think the trajectory of most candidates who get in early to Republican primaries doesn’t really fare too well, so I think there is a benefit to him waiting until the end of this process,” he said.