Pence Won’t Face Charges in Classified Documents Inquiry

The Justice Department has declined to pursue charges against former Vice President Mike Pence in its investigation into his retention of classified documents at his home in Indiana, informing him in a brief letter on Thursday night, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Word that the case would be closed came days before Mr. Pence, 63, was set to announce his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in Iowa.

The F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s national security division “conducted an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information,” the department wrote to Mr. Pence’s lawyer, according to a person who had read the letter. Based on the results of that investigation, “no criminal charges will be sought,” that person said.

The decision served as a reminder of an enormously consequential plotline that remains unresolved as the 2024 election season gets underway.

The most important, by far, is the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and whether he sought to obstruct the inquiry now led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, after Mr. Trump and his aides repeatedly resisted efforts to return sensitive government documents. President Biden is also under investigation by a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, over the improper retention of materials dating from his eight years as vice president — although Mr. Biden has been far more cooperative with investigators.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the Pence investigation. But Attorney General Merrick B. Garland did not deem the matter serious enough to appoint a special counsel in the case, as he had done for the investigations into Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, senior law enforcement officials said.

For Mr. Pence, a man who has made personal probity — and a determination to defend the rule of law in defiance of Mr. Trump after the 2020 election — the core of his long-shot presidential campaign, the decision represented bittersweet vindication, ending an embarrassing episode that had threatened his reputation.

From the start, Mr. Pence and his team cooperated with the authorities, in stark contrast to Mr. Trump, who defied a federal subpoena to return materials stored at his Florida residence and resort, Mar-a-Lago.

In January, a lawyer for Mr. Pence voluntarily searched the former vice president’s house in Carmel, Ind., for documents after aides to President Biden discovered sensitive material at an office the president had once occupied in Washington and at his home in Delaware.

About a dozen documents with classified markings were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Mr. Pence’s home, according to one of his aides at the time, and subsequently returned to the National Archives and Records Administration.

After the F.B.I. searched his home in February and found one additional classified document, his advisers continued to emphasize his cooperation.

“The vice president has directed his legal team to continue its cooperation with appropriate authorities and to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter,” his adviser, Devin O’Malley, said then.

Mr. Pence and Trump remain in a legal and political tangle resulting from their odd-couple White House partnership.

In April, Mr. Pence testified for more than five hours before a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the actions of Mr. Trump and his aides in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had sought to limit his testimony and avoid appearing, citing the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution to argue that he was protected from legal scrutiny.

Mr. Trump unsuccessfully sought to prevent Mr. Pence from discussing their private interactions, citing executive privilege.

It is not clear what testimony Mr. Pence provided. But prosecutors were surely interested in Mr. Pence’s account of his interactions with Mr. Trump and Trump advisers including John Eastman, a lawyer who promoted the idea that he could delay or block the congressional certification process on Jan. 6 to give Mr. Trump a chance to remain in office.

Mr. Pence’s unwillingness to go along with that plan infuriated Mr. Trump, who assailed his vice president privately and publicly on Jan. 6.

He subsequently became a target of the Trump loyalists who stormed the Capitol building that day, with some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Someone erected a fake gallows outside the building.

Mr. Pence, a former governor of Indiana, faces significant challenges in his bid for the presidency. He trails far behind his former boss and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the polls, and has made no effort to channel the harder-edged populist energies overtaking the Republican Party.

Instead, he is expected to pitch himself as a “classical conservative” who would return his party to its Reagan-era brand of mainstream conservatism. He is also likely to appeal to evangelicals, adopting a hard-line position in support of a federal abortion ban and promoting free trade and government regulations.