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New Classified Document Found in FBI Search of Pence Home

The FBI discovered an additional document with classified markings at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home during a search Friday, following the discovery by his lawyers last month of sensitive government documents there.

Pence adviser Devin O’Malley said the U.S. Department of Justice completed “a thorough and unrestricted search of five hours” and removed “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.”

The search, described as consensual after negotiations between Pence’s representatives and the Justice Department, comes as he has been subpoenaed in a separate investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election and as Pence contemplates a Republican bid for the White House in 2024.

Pence is now the third current or former top U.S. official, joining Trump and President Joe Biden, to have their homes scoured by FBI agents for classified records. The willingness of Pence and Biden to permit the FBI to search their homes, and to present themselves as fully cooperative, reflects a desire by both to avoid the drama that enveloped Trump last year and resulted in the Justice Department having to get a warrant to inspect his Florida property.

FBI said to have unrestricted access

Police blocked the road outside Pence’s neighborhood in Carmel, just north of Indianapolis, on Friday afternoon as the FBI was inside the home. Pence himself was out of state, visiting family in California after the birth of a grandchild.

A member of Pence’s legal team was at the home, according to one of the people familiar with the situation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. That person said the FBI was given unrestricted access.

The FBI had already taken possession of what Pence’s lawyer previously described as a “small number of documents” that had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s Indiana home at the end of the Trump administration.

The Justice Department did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Separate special counsels have been investigating the discovery of documents with classification markings at Biden’s home in Delaware and his former Washington office, as well as Trump’s Florida estate. Officials are trying to determine whether Trump or anyone on his team criminally obstructed the probe in refusing to turn over the documents before the FBI seizure. The FBI recovered more than 100 documents marked classified while serving a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last August.

Pence: ‘I take full responsibility’

The circumstances of the Biden and Pence cases are markedly different from that of Trump.

Pence, according to his lawyer Greg Jacob, had requested a review by his attorneys of records stored at his home “out of an abundance of caution” during the uproar over the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s home and former private office. When the Pence documents were discovered, Jacob said, they were secured in a locked safe and reported to the National Archives. FBI agents then collected them.

Material found in the boxes came mostly from the Naval Observatory residence where Pence lived while he was vice president. Other material came from a West Wing office drawer.

Pence has said he was unaware the documents had been in his possession.

“Let me be clear: Those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence,” Pence said recently at Florida International University. “Mistakes were made, and I take full responsibility.”

“We acted above politics and put national interests first,” he said.

The National Archives last month asked former U.S. presidents and vice presidents to recheck their personal records for any classified documents following news of the Biden and Pence discoveries.

The Presidential Records Act states that any records created or received by the president while in office are the property of the U.S. government and will be managed by the Archives at the end of an administration.
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Historians Tackle Biggest Lies About America’s Past

Some American myths go all the way back to the nation’s founding. Like the one where, as a young boy, America’s first president, George Washington, felt compelled to tell the truth about taking a hatchet to his father’s cherry tree because he could not tell a lie.

“There are plenty of lies that are kind of white lies that have a positive spin,” says Kevin M. Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton University. “And what’s the harm there? It teaches children the value of honesty.”

The real harm comes, Kruse says, when lies or myths impact U.S. government policy. Kruse and fellow Princeton historian Julian E. Zelizer put together a collection of essays for their book, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past.”

In the anthology, 20 mainly liberal historians take on what they see as conservative distortions of the history behind hot-button issues like border security, voter fraud, police brutality and the backlash against civil rights protests in the aftermath of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, a Black man.

Glenda Gilmore of Yale University writes that a sanitized, somewhat one-dimensional image of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, leader of “good protests,” obscures his relevance to the Black Lives Matter protesters who took to the streets in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.

“[Martin Luther King, Jr.] was much more searing in his denunciations of capitalism [and] militarism,” Kruse says. “King has been shorn of all that controversy and complications, reduced to this non-offensive figure who simply stood up and said, ‘Well, racism is bad and everyone agrees.’

“As a result, that seals him off from any connection to the present. That example of the good civil rights protest is constantly held up in contrast to bad civil rights protests to shame people involved in Black Lives Matter for not being like King when, in fact, they’re actually a lot like King.”

Northwestern University historian Geraldo Cadava writes that Americans who are worried about policing the southern border with Mexico have “displaced anxieties about imperial and national decline, economic fragility, and demographic change.”

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a professor of history at The New School, challenges the notion that feminism embraces anti-family values by exploring how feminists have historically defended the traditional family.

Eric Rauchway, a history professor at the University of California, Davis, has studied the New Deal, a series of programs, financial reforms and regulations signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to help America recover from the Great Depression. In the book, Rauchway challenges the assertion of some conservative politicians that the New Deal was ineffective.

“If we believe, wrongly, that the New Deal was a failure, that discourages us from any kind of economic action along that line. You constantly see historical tropes trotted out in ways that close off options. Our sense of what happened in the past deepens our understanding of what is possible in the future,” Kruse says.

“If we firmly believe that this kind of approach failed, or this got us nowhere, we’re much less likely to try it again. So we need to understand where we’ve been if we want to understand where we’re going to go.”

The book and its assertions have been dismissed by some conservatives who say the “highly partisan” analyses are hobbled by “leftist myths.”

An essay in the National Review suggests, “The book does not debunk any myths; it merely promulgates different, radically progressive ones.”

Writing for the American Institute for Economic Research, Michael J. Douma maintains that history is an ongoing discussion that historians often don’t agree on.

“When you see your opponents’ views as all lies, myths, and legends, it might say more about the way you engage your opposition than the content of their arguments,” writes Douma, who is an associate research professor at Georgetown University.

Kruse counters such criticism by asserting that he and his co-contributors are responding to the moment.

“I understand we live in an era in which there’s going to be a kind of a reflexive desire to create an equivalence on both sides right now.” Kruse says. “No. The real challenges to American history are coming from the right and so that’s where we directed our attention.”
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Pence Subpoenaed by Special Counsel Investigating Trump

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event.

The subpoena to Pence as part of the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith was served in recent days, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss a sensitive issue.

The extraordinary scenario of a former vice president potentially testifying against his former boss in a criminal investigation comes as Pence considers launching a 2024 presidential bid against Trump. The two have been estranged since a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

ABC News first reported the subpoena.

Pence was at the center of Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Trump falsely insisted that Pence, who had a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the election on Jan. 6, could simply reject the results and send the results “back to the States.”

That day, Trump supporters, driven by the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, marched to the Capitol building, brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors while Pence was presiding over the certification of Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”

Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith, a former public corruption prosecutor, in November to serve as the special counsel for investigations into Trump’s attempts to subvert his defeat, his actions leading up to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his possession of classified documents after leaving office.

Federal prosecutors have been especially focused on a scheme by Trump allies to elevate fake presidential electors in key battleground states won by Biden as a way to subvert the vote, issuing subpoenas to multiple state Republican Party chairs.

Federal prosecutors have brought multiple Trump administration officials before the grand jury for questioning, including former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Pence’s own former chief of staff, Marc Short.

In a sign of the expanding nature of the investigation, election officials in multiple states whose results were disputed by Trump have received subpoenas asking for communications with or involving Trump and his campaign aides.

A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss.
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As Political Decorum Declines, Biden’s Verbal Jujitsu Strategy Emerges

Taking his message of unity Wednesday to Wisconsin, a state key to his likely 2024 reelection bid, U.S. President Joe Biden doubled down on his criticisms of Republicans, calling out by name those who had called him a “liar” during his State of the Union address Tuesday evening.

“Many of you have seen, we’ve had a spirited debate last night with my Republican friends,” he said, referring to the boos and jeers befalling upon him as he asserted that Republicans aim to sunset Social Security and Medicare, social programs cherished by supporters of both major parties.

“Marjorie Taylor-Greene and others stood up and said, ‘Liar, liar,’” Biden said, referring to the Republican representative from Georgia who heckled him repeatedly. He then laid out names of Republican lawmakers, including Florida Senator Rick Scott, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and Utah Senator Mike Lee, and the instances in which they suggested cutting government spending on the programs that tens of millions of Americans depend on.

“Sounds pretty clear to me. How about you?” Biden, a Democrat, quipped before repeating what he concluded in his remarks following the outbursts — that Republicans now agree to protect Social Security and Medicare

“It looks like we negotiated a deal last night,” he joked.

The verbal jujitsu skills displayed amid Republican attacks and the decline in congressional decorum is a preview of the way Biden will conduct his expected reelection campaign in 2024, observers say.

“I do think President Biden was challenging or even ‘baiting’ Republicans to respond to him,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on Congress and elections. “House leadership had warned members to not take the bait, but the dynamic spiraled. The members who shouted out that the president was lying probably did not help their cause.” 

Decades in ‘the business’

With 50 years of political experience under his belt, Biden, now 80 years old, appeared to relish the exchange, grinning as he swiped back at Republicans. “We’ll, I’m glad to see — I tell you, I enjoy conversion,” he said.

“It’s hard to say if the president was expecting that reaction, but he was certainly prepared for it. He’s been in this business for a long time,” said Jeff Bennett, professor and chair of communication studies at Vanderbilt University. “The president was arguing that he’s a reasonable person who is willing to reach across the aisle to get things done. And then the hecklers ended up providing the visual evidence he needed to support that claim.”

The heckling opponents appeared unruly and disrespectful of what is supposed to be an orderly American tradition that began with President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, observers noted.

“Ceremonial occasions aren’t debate occasions, which is why congressional outbursts seem so out of place and indecorous,” Jennifer Mercieca, who teaches presidential rhetoric at Texas A&M University, told VOA. “Those outbursts aren’t what the Greeks called ‘kairotic’ — the right time and place. it’s not the right time nor the right place for debate.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre contrasted lawmakers who behaved in a way that “Americans don’t want” with a president who “was very clear in how he sees the next two years.”

“He called out members on live television, in front of millions of Americans, and effectively put them on the defense,” she said in a briefing to reporters Wednesday.

Republicans are certainly defensive.

“We’ve made it clear from the beginning, we are going to honor our debt, we are going to protect our seniors. And furthermore, we’re going to take care of our military personnel,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee told VOA. “And so for him to stand in the dais at the podium, and to make those accusations and really scare the American people was untruthful.”

Biden’s tone was “accusatory,” Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Trump administration, told VOA. “It really wasn’t bipartisan at all.”

Decorum in decline

As Republicans heckled throughout the speech, including shouting calls to “secure the border,” many are noticing that these disruptions are now considered acceptable in American politics.

It’s a far cry from the condemnation lobbed by members of both parties when Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress. Booed by his colleagues, Wilson, a Republican, later issued an apology to the president, a Democrat.

“Then, it was a single voice, and it was shocking,” Fortier noted. “Last night, it became almost a team back and forth, somewhat reminiscent of Prime Minister’s Question Time, with many voices calling back at the president,” he said, referring to the animated British parliamentary tradition when members of the House of Commons grill the prime minister, often in an unruly manner.

Biden will likely aim to disarm combative congressional Republicans with the same strategy of boxing them in a corner as he is set to again clash with lawmakers demanding spending cuts before agreeing to pass a debt ceiling hike to avoid the country from defaulting in a few months.

“I can’t imagine that’s how negotiations to the debt ceiling will play out, but this moment will be an important one in the coming months,” Bennett said. “This is all part of his strategy to show that he is a uniter who is willing to reach across the aisle to do the business of the American people.”

Bringing the parties together will not be easy. New polling from Ipsos shows that 70% of Americans believe the country is “far apart” on issues of government budget and debt. Eighty-one percent believe the country is far apart on the abortion issue, and 78% believe the country is far apart on immigration stances.
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Ex-Twitter Execs Deny Pressure to Block Hunter Biden Story

Former Twitter executives conceded Wednesday they made a mistake by blocking a story about Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, from the social media platform in the run-up to the 2020 election, but adamantly denied Republican assertions they were pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story.

“The decisions here aren’t straightforward, and hindsight is 20/20,” Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, testified to Congress. “It isn’t obvious what the right response is to a suspected, but not confirmed, cyberattack by another government on a presidential election.”

He added, “Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.”

The three former executives appeared before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee to testify for the first time about the company’s decision to initially block from Twitter a New York Post article in October 2020 about the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.

Emboldened by Twitter’s new leadership in billionaire Elon Musk — whom they see as more sympathetic to conservatives than the company’s previous leadership — Republicans used the hearing to push a long-standing and unproven theory that social media companies including Twitter are biased against them.

Committee Chairman Representative James Comer said the hearing is the panel’s “first step in examining the coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process.”

Alleged political bias

The hearing continues a yearslong trend of Republican leaders calling tech company leaders to testify about alleged political bias. Democrats, meanwhile, have pressed the companies on the spread of hate speech and misinformation on their platforms.

The witnesses Republicans subpoenaed were Roth, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, and James Baker, the company’s former deputy general counsel.

Democrats brought a witness of their own, Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee with Twitter’s content moderation team. She testified last year to the House committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol riot about Twitter’s preferential treatment of Donald Trump until it banned the then-president from the site two years ago.

‘A bizarre political stunt’

The White House criticized congressional Republicans for staging “a bizarre political stunt,” hours after Biden’s State of the Union address where he detailed bipartisan progress in his first two years in office.

“This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and relitigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement Wednesday. “This is not what the American people want their leaders to work on.”

The New York Post reported weeks before the 2020 presidential election that it had received from Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a copy of a hard drive from a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter blocked people from sharing links to the story for several days.

“You exercised an amazing amount of clout and power over the entire American electorate by even holding (this story) hostage for 24 hours and then reversing your policy,” Representative Andy Biggs said to the panel of witnesses.

Months later, Twitter’s then-CEO, Jack Dorsey, called the company’s communications around the Post article “not great.” He added that blocking the article’s URL with “zero context” around why it was blocked was “unacceptable.”

The newspaper story was greeted at the time with skepticism because of questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden before the White House election.

The Kremlin interfered in the 2016 race by hacking Democratic emails that were subsequently leaked, and fears that Russia would meddle again in the 2020 race were widespread across Washington.

Musk releases ‘Twitter files’

Just last week, lawyers for the younger Biden asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate people who say they accessed his personal data. But they did not acknowledge that the data came from a laptop Hunter Biden is purported to have dropped off at a computer repair shop.

The issue was also reignited recently after Musk took over Twitter as CEO and began to release a slew of company information to independent journalists, what he has called the “Twitter Files.”

The documents and data largely show internal debates among employees over the decision to temporarily censor links to the Hunter Biden story. The tweet threads lacked substantial evidence of a targeted influence campaign from Democrats or the FBI, which has denied any involvement in Twitter’s decision-making.

Witness often targeted

One of Wednesday’s witnesses, Baker, has been a frequent target of Republican scrutiny.

Baker was the FBI’s general counsel during the opening of two of the bureau’s most consequential investigations in history: the Hillary Clinton investigation and a separate inquiry into potential coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Republicans have long criticized the FBI’s handling of both investigations.

Baker denied any wrongdoing during his two years at Twitter and said that despite disagreeing with the decision to block links to the Post story, “I believe that the public record reveals that my client acted in a manner that was fully consistent with the First Amendment.”

There has been no evidence that Twitter’s platform is biased against conservatives; studies have found the opposite when it comes to conservative media in particular. But the issue continues to preoccupy Republican members of Congress.

And some experts said questions around government influence on Big Tech’s content moderation are legitimate.
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