Pence pledges changes to Justice Department if elected

Saying many Americans have “lost confidence” in the Justice Department, former Vice President Mike Pence promised to “clean house at the highest levels of the Justice Department” if elected president.

Pence’s remarks, which were to air Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," come as former President Donald Trump, the current GOP frontrunner, faces 37 federal felony charges related to classified information he had stored at his private residence in Florida.

Trump has called the indictment “political prosecution” and his allies — and some of his 2024 opponents — have attacked the Justice Department for bringing the charges.

Speaking to host Chuck Todd, Pence promised sweeping reforms to the department’s leadership if elected, saying he would assemble a team “beginning with an attorney general, a director of the FBI, other senior political appointed personnel, people confirmed by the United States Senate, who are respected on both sides of the aisle, who are seen as men and women of integrity, who will apply the law fairly and evenly.”

“Lady Justice is blind, Chuck,” Pence told Todd. “And there are tens of millions of Americans who have reason to believe that the blinders have been taken off and that we haven't seen equal treatment under the law.”

Pence maintained that the allegations in the indictment against Trump are “serious,” and “no one is above the law,” but said that the charging decision “just continues to feed the notion among the American people that there's two standards for justice in this country.”