The "double standard" after classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, where President Joe Biden kept an office, is "troubling," as he should face the same scrutiny under a special counsel as former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday.
"Equal treatment in the law is at the very center of the expectation of the American people and of our history and our tradition," Pence told talk show host Hugh Hewitt. "What did the Biden administration say — they were going to tap someone appointed in the Trump administration to take a look at it while President Trump faces down a special counsel? ... It's deeply troubling to me."
The FBI's "massive outreach" in August during the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate was the "original sin," said Pence.
"I served on the Judiciary Committee for the better part of 11 years in the Congress of the United States," said Pence. "I believe the rank-and-file of the FBI are some of the best men and women in this country. But the decision by the senior leadership of the Justice Department to execute a search warrant against a former president of the United States was wrong. It was an overreach."
Biden's personal attorneys found the classified documents while clearing out his former offices, reporting the discovery on Nov. 2. Richard Sauber, the president's special counsel, said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel's office, which notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which claimed the documents the next day.
Special counsel Jack Smith was assigned to investigate the documents seized during the raid on Trump's estate, but in Biden's case, Attorney General Merrick Garland asked Trump appointee John Lausch, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to review the matter, according to reports.
"Whether it be the administration or whether it be the media papering over this, look, it was a massive overreach by the FBI, a massive overreaction this summer to execute a search warrant at the personal residence of a former president of the United States, and I said so," Pence said Tuesday.
"But having now created that standard and now abandoned that standard when the current president of the United States is found to have had classified documents in his possession after leaving office, I have no words right now. It's just incredibly frustrating to me."
Pence also said he "couldn't agree more" with Hewitt, who said he doesn't understand how Biden and Trump did not end up with the same special counsel investigating their actions.
Pence added that the national media has a "willingness" to "turn a deaf ear" to the Biden disclosures.
"If they didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all," Pence said.
Further, Pence said that he hopes that while Smith's investigation of Trump continues, he hopes "they take a half-step back and think very deeply before taking any action against a former president of the United States in terms of the message that sends to the world, the message that sends to the people of this country, the divisive nature of that."