Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday that he wasn’t aware of any effort by Donald Trump or White House staff to declassify documents in the final months of the Trump presidency, backing up a claim made by Mark Meadows and casting further doubt on Mr Trump’s defence ahead of the ex-president’s criminal trial.
Mr Trump remains criminally charged over four separate matters, one of which being his retention of documents from the White House; many are alleged by the Justice Department to be classified defence materials and other records that the ex-president had without permission of the National Archives. He has denied this, claiming that any classified materials in his possession were formally declassified before he left office and further arguing that he had the right to take whichever documents he wanted to keep.
