The raid of former President Donald Trump was a "gross overreach" by the Department of Justice, says GOP presidential contender Mike Pence.
"When the FBI raided the home of a former president of the United States, I was among the first to denounce that," Pence said Tuesday during a town hall appearance on Newsmax.
"I was I was on the Judiciary Committee for many years. I understand how the Justice Department is supposed to work, and there had to be about a dozen different ways to resolve the issue of classified documents in the in the president's residence," he added.
"I had dealings with that on my own after we did a voluntary search of our residences, and so it seemed, to me, to be a gross overreach."
The FBI last year searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence.
This past June he was indicted on 37 counts of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, coming less than three months after he was charged in New York with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Pence said he also thought issues around Trump's "conduct and actions on" Jan. 6 "and leading up to that day" would be left to the judgment of the American people and not be brought into the courts of this country.
"I'll trust the people of Iowa, the people of New Hampshire, the people of this country to sort out the qualifications and the merits of all of us as candidates, and so I know the former president very well – we haven't talked in a while, but we used to talk and work together every day for the better part of five years. … "I know that he can defend himself in court, and I'm sure he'll continue to but, look, I would like to see these issues resolved by voters, by the American people, and if I'm president of the United States, I promise you we're going to clean the house of the entire top floor of the Justice Department on day one, and we're going to install not just an attorney general and a director of FBI, but men and women of integrity at the highest levels of the Justice Department, who, people on both sides of the aisle, will recognize are committed to the application and enforcement of the law without fear or favor or partisanship."
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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