“The View” host and former White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin was pretty shocked by the discovery of classified documents in Mike Pence’s home this week. That’s because apparently, it was Pence himself who “put the fear of God” in her when it came to handling classified documents while she worked for him.
Ever since it was revealed that twice-impeached former president Donald Trump took hundreds of classified documents from his time in the White House, Farah Griffin has been vocal on the show about the fact that she was regularly reminded of proper protocol for documents while she worked in the White House. She’s often noted that if it were her who had taken the documents, or virtually anyone else, they’d be facing jail time.
So, when it came out that Pence had a dozen documents at his home, Farah Griffin revealed on Wednesday that it was the former vice president specifically who stayed on top of staff about handling sensitive information.
“Who put the fear of God in me about classified documents was Mike Pence. As soon as I came on his staff, we did ethics training, we did document retention,” she said. “I was so scared to do anything with classified information. That’s why I’m blown away by just how willy nilly folks seem to be treating them.”
She later noted that, when she worked for Pence, he was “very by the book.”
“So when we would prepare for foreign trips, even just to prep them for media interviews, we would do it in the Situation Room in case something we talked about even might suggest classified information,” she said.
That said, both Farah Griffin and her co-hosts argued that Pence might deserve a “pass” when it comes to his documents, given the “chaotic nature” of the transition of power.
“I feel like Pence does get a little bit of a pass because it was the insurrection, and it was ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ and people stormed the Capitol, and he was sneaking around and sneaking out and they gotta get out of there quickly,” Sunny Hostin said. “I completely understand that, and I’m not a Pence fan.”
You can watch the full segment from “The View” in the video above.