A recently released Justice Department memo mentioned by Rep. Jamie Raskin says investigators believed President Donald Trump kept classified records related to his business interests.
One document was so restricted that only six people in the U.S. government had access to it, according to NBC News. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Raskin claimed the memo supports the assertion that Trump “stole” sensitive files and mishandled them after leaving office.
The memo, detailed by NBC News, was written in January 2023 as federal prosecutors considered charges in the classified documents case related to the president’s handling of records at Mar-a-Lago.
Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, stated the memo showed prosecutors found evidence that Trump retained classified documents “related to his business interests.” Reuters reported that the records sent to Congress included this allegation, along with a claim that some files were mixed with later documents.
Trump appeared to have business motive for keeping classified documents, Jack Smith finds pic.twitter.com/vxHLOuyquL
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) March 25, 2026
Raskin’s letter also referred to a June 2022 flight to the President’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The memo indicated prosecutors had identified a classified map that they believed Trump may have shown to people on the plane, according to the Associated Press.
Raskin noted that Susie Wiles, who later became Trump’s White House chief of staff, was on the flight and witnessed the event. Reuters mentioned that investigators found one box of documents scanned, stored on a Trump aide’s laptop for nearly two years, and uploaded to the cloud.
The classified documents investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith had already resulted in felony charges accusing the President of keeping top-secret national defense records and obstructing efforts to recover them. The indictment included separate claims that Trump showed a classified map at Bedminster in 2021 and discussed a Pentagon “plan of attack,” according to AP.
However, the case never went to trial. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed it in 2024 after ruling Smith had been improperly appointed, and the case was later dropped after Trump returned to office due to the longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
“These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests,” Raskin wrote. “This glimpse into the trove of…
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) March 25, 2026
The President and his administration dismissed Raskin’s claims. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson stated, “President Trump did nothing wrong,” while the Justice Department said Smith’s team made “salacious and untrue claims” about the President, according to AP. Reuters reported that the department called Raskin’s letter “a cheap political stunt” and denied that providing the records to Congress broke any court order.
Raskin has requested more information from Bondi, including the names of the passengers on the June 2022 flight and details about the map mentioned in the memo. He also noted that the disclosure of the records to Congress might have conflicted with a protective order issued by Cannon that prohibits the release of information from the investigation.
AP stated that Smith’s final report on the classified documents case remains sealed, making the newly surfaced memo one of the clearest insights into the evidence prosecutors said they gathered before the case was dropped.
