Pence Criticizes Fellow Republicans Over Calls To ‘Defund The FBI’

Former Vice President Mike Pence condemned his fellow Republicans on Wednesday who have spoken out against the FBI for executing a search warrant on Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago residence last week.

“The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” Pence told a crowd at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. “And these attacks on the FBI must stop; calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”

“I also want to remind my fellow Republicans we can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision that he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI,” Pence added.

The investigation into the Trump administration’s classified documents began in February when the National Archives called on the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether or not Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires former Presidents to turn in all documents and records from their administration, after locating 15 boxes of classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

The unsealed list of items taken from Mar-a-Lago reported that the FBI found 11 sets of top secret documents in their search last week, with some of them pertaining to nuclear information.

Pence pledged to call for Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland to be transparent about the reasons behind the FBI’s search.

“The truth of the matter is, we need to get to the bottom of what happened,” Pence said. “We need to let the facts play out, but more than anything else, the American people need to be reassured in the integrity of our justice system and the very appearance of a recurrence of politics playing a role in decisions that the Justice Department demands transparency as never before.”