DOJ uncovered ‘serious evidence’ about Trump’s purchase of classified documents, Judiciary Democrat says.
The Justice Department has released documents to Congress that include “shocking evidence” about President Donald Trump’s purchase of highly sensitive documents, including some related to his business interests, when he left office after his first term, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday.
In a letter he wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Raskin alleged that some of the documents, which were sought by then special counsel Jack Smith in his defunct case against Trump, were only available to six people in the government, and that the documents appeared to be related to the former president’s business.
“These new revelations suggest that Donald Trump stole sensitive documents that only six people in the entire US government have access to, that the documents President Trump stole were related to his business, and that Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Donald Trump’s super PAC, witnessed President Trump showing a classified map to passengers on his private jet,” wrote Raskin, D-Md.
The Justice Department’s release of documents from Smith’s investigation to the Republican-led House committee on previous investigations into Trump may have violated US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order barring public disclosure of material from the special counsel’s investigation, Raskin said.
Cannon issued the order after dismissing the case on the grounds that Smith’s appointment by the DOJ was “illegal.”
The Justice Department under Biden appealed Cannon’s decision, who was previously fired after trying to appoint a special counsel to review classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago; three Republican-appointed judges found Cannon “improperly exercising equitable jurisdiction” in the latter case.
Smith, who removed the case related to Jan. 6 related to Trump after Trump’s victory in 2024, he told Congress that in that case, his team had gathered “indisputable evidence” that Trump was involved in a criminal scheme to subvert the 2020 election.
In a letter to Bondi, Raskin accused the Justice Department of being “blinded by a frantic search for any evidence” of the attack on Smith, adding that the department “stunningly missed that some of the documents you provided included shocking evidence about your boss’s conduct and may violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trumpen are seeking against Judge A.”
The Justice Department said in a post to X that Raskin, “like Jack Smith, is blinded by hatred for President Trump.”
The statement called Raskin’s allegations “baseless” and “cheap political stunts,” saying “Smith’s team wanted to prosecute.” [then-President Joe] He is Biden’s biggest political opponent, so it’s no surprise that his files contain malicious and false claims about President Trump. ” The Justice Department also asserted that Cannon’s order was not violated.
Reached for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson echoed the DOJ’s submission, saying it was “disappointing that trusted Democrats like Jamie Raskin” are “holding on” to Smith.
“President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the unprecedented Biden DOJ legal campaign against him and won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide victory,” Jackson said.
NBC News has reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
Raskin said information released by the Justice Department shows that Trump “apparently took classified documents on a flight to his golf club in Bedminster, NJ” in 2022. Citing a DOJ disclosure, the attorney wrote that prosecutors believe Trump may have shown a classified map to people on the plane, noting that they believe this was corroborated by chief of staff Wiles.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, blocked the release of Smith’s report outside the Justice Department earlier this year and specifically blocked it from being sent to Congress last year.
Raskin wrote that without access to Smith’s report or other investigative materials, lawmakers had no details about the classified map and other information disclosed by the DOJ.
“Without access to Volume II of the Special Counsel’s final report or investigative files, we do not know what that classified map contains, nor can we find from this memo the relationship between the classified documents that President Trump stole and their relevance to his ‘business interests,'” Raskin wrote.
Raskin submitted a series of questions to Bondi, asking for more information about who Trump showed the classified map to, what the map detailed, and information about the document that was said to be accessible to only six people. He also requested information about “improper” documents kept by Trump “related to his business.”
Raskin has asked Bondi to answer questions by the end of this month. He also said the Justice Department “must stop collecting investigative materials” and release all information prepared by Smith’s office on April 14.
