Retired Vice President will not be put in the DOJ investigation of categorized records found at his residence

June 5, 2023: No charges will be filed against retired Vice President Mike Pence in the Department of Justice investigation of classified records found at his Indiana home.

The Justice Department’s national security division told Pence’s attorney in a letter that it was closing its probe and would not file charges based on the “effects” of its investigation, NBC News stated Friday morning.

The probe’s conclusion comes less than a week before Pence is reportedly set to announce he is running for president. The Republican primary campaign will put Pence in competition with his previously boss, former President Donald Trump, embroiled in a much larger investigation over classified documents stored at his resort home Mar-a-Lago after he left office in 2021.

In January, Pence’s lawyer said a “small number” of classified reports had been found at his home in Carmel, Indiana. The lawyer said Pence was ignorant that the documents were there and that he had engaged an outside consultant to explore his home for such materials “out of an abundance of caution” following the discovery of classified records at President Joe Biden’s home.

Less than a month later, the FBI conducted a five-hour search of Pence’s residence and found an additional classified document.

Trump, meanwhile, faces a federal criminal investigation into the hundreds of classified documents that have been removed from Mar-a-Lago since he left the White House. An FBI search of the Palm Beach, Florida, resort before August turned up more than 100 additional classified records and a slew of other materials taken by the federal agents.

Trump has denied misconduct and publicly claimed he declassified the records on his property. A DOJ special counsel is leading the investigation into those records and the possible obstruction of the probe. News outlets reported this week that the special counsel obtained an audio tape from 2021 in which Trump acknowledged that a document he saved after his presidency was classified.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump said it was “great” that the DOJ was not bringing charges against Pence but wondered when he, too, will be “fully cleared. I’m at least as clear as he is,” Trump told Mike Pence.