Former special counsel Jack Smith's team had evidence that President Donald Trump had classified documents, including materials relevant to business interests, after he left office following his first term, according to a memo the Justice Department gave to Congress.
The memo, obtained by NBC News, summarizes what prosecutors were working on as of January 2023 related to an investigation of allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents.
“Trump had in his possession some highly sensitive documents — the type of documents that only presidents and officials with the most sensitive authority have,” the memo said. They included one document that was previously “accessible by only 6? people, including the president.”
“That document is one we will need,” prosecutors said in the memo.
Smith’s team also wrote, “Trump had many documents in his possession — so many and in so many different places that it is hard to fathom that he was not aware.”
The memo said Smith’s team believed Trump may have shown a classified map to other people on a flight to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, an event that the team says was witnessed by Susie Wiles, now Trump’s chief of staff.
Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, summarized the memo's content in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, saying that the document included "damning evidence" about Trump's procurement of highly sensitive documents.
The Justice Department's release of documents from Smith's investigation to the Republican-run House committee might have violated U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's order barring public disclosure of materials from the special counsel probe, Raskin said.
Cannon issued the order after she dismissed the case on the grounds that the Justice Department’s appointment of Smith was "unlawful."
The Justice Department under President Joe Biden appealed the ruling by Cannon, who had been reversed on appeal after she tried to appoint a special master to review the classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Three Republican-appointed judges found Cannon “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” in the special master issue.
Smith, who moved to dismiss the separate Jan. 6-related case against Trump after Trump’s 2024 victory, told Congress that in that probe, his team had gathered “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
In his letter to Bondi, Raskin accused the Justice Department of being "blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence" to attack Smith, adding that the department has, "quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon."
The Justice Department said on X that Raskin, “much like Jack Smith, is blinded by hatred of President Trump.”
The statement called Raskin’s allegations “baseless” and “a cheap political stunt,” saying, “Smith’s team was desperate to prosecute Biden’s top political opponent, so it is no surprise that his files contain salacious and untrue claims about President Trump.” The Justice Department also asserted that Cannon’s order was not violated.
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson echoed the Justice Department's post, saying it was “pathetic that Democrats with zero credibility like Jamie Raskin” were “clinging” to Smith.
“President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented lawfare campaign against him and then won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide election victory,” Jackson said.
NBC News has reached out to Smith's representative for comment.
Raskin said the information the Justice Department released indicated Trump "apparently took classified documents on a flight to his golf club in Bedminster, NJ" in 2022. Quoting from the Justice Department disclosures, he wrote that prosecutors believed Trump might have shown a classified map to people on the plane, noting that they believed it was witnessed by Wiles.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, blocked the public release of Smith's report outside of the Justice Department this year and specifically prohibited it from being sent to Congress last year.
Raskin wrote that because of Cannon's orders, lawmakers did not have details about the classified map and other information the committee disclosed to the Justice Department.
"Without access to Volume II of the Special Counsel’s final report or the investigative files, we do not know what that classified map contained, nor can we determine from this memo the relationship between the classified documents President Trump stole and their pertinence to his 'business interests,'" Raskin wrote.
Raskin submitted a series of questions asking Bondi for further information about whom Trump was alleged to have shown the classified map to and what the map detailed, as well as information about the document allegedly accessible by only six people. He also requested details about documents Trump retained "improperly" that were "pertinent to his business interests."
Raskin asked that Bondi respond to the questions by the end of the month. He also said the Justice Department "must cease cherry-picking investigative materials" and release all information prepared by Smith's office by April 14.
