DOJ Unintentionally Handed Congress 'Incriminating Evidence' Against Trump, Claims Raskin

WASHINGTON — Classified documents tied to President Donald Trump's private business dealings were taken from the White House in 2021, as indicated by materials the Justice Department reportedly provided to the House Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the leading Democrat on the committee, posited in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that these documents were inadvertently shared in a careless attempt to undermine the ongoing criminal investigation into Trump.

“These new disclosures imply that Donald Trump appropriated documents so sensitive that only six individuals within the entire U.S. government had access to them,” Raskin stated. “Moreover, these documents pertained to his business interests, and Susie Wiles, then-CEO of Trump’s super PAC, witnessed him showcasing a classified map to passengers aboard his private jet.”

Raskin urged Bondi to inform lawmakers in a classified setting about the passengers on the plane, the contents of the map, and which of Trump’s business interests were relevant to the documents. His letter included an image of an aircraft manifest with a redacted passenger list from a 2022 flight from Florida to New York.

A grand jury indicted Trump in 2023 for unlawfully retaining classified documents and obstructing a federal investigation. The indictment detailed that the materials included “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign nations; U.S. nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

If the map was related to U.S. military positioning in the Middle East and was shown to foreign officials, Raskin asserted, “that would constitute an unforgivable betrayal of our men and women in uniform who are currently valiantly engaged in President Trump’s disastrous war against Iran.”

According to Raskin, the FBI determined that some documents withheld by Trump “would be pertinent to certain business interests” of his, citing material he claimed was provided by the Justice Department to the Judiciary Committee earlier this month. A memo from the Justice Department indicated that “classified documents pertinent to his business interests” established “a motive for retaining them.”

Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing both the document case and a separate criminal case against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, halted prosecutions after Trump won the 2024 election. While Smith released a public report on the election case, District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked the release of Smith’s report concerning the document case.

House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has spearheaded a counter-investigation into Smith’s inquiry regarding Trump. Lawmakers interrogated the former special counsel during a private deposition last year and at a public hearing in January. Smith declined to discuss the document case, citing Cannon’s gag order.

Raskin informed Bondi that the documents sent to the Judiciary Committee this month seemed part of a misguided effort by the Justice Department to provide Jordan with damaging information about Smith.

“Apparently blinded by the frenzied search for any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to launch an attack against Special Counsel Smith,” Raskin wrote, “you have, quite astonishingly, overlooked that some of the documents you provided contain incriminating evidence regarding your boss’s conduct and may well breach the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump requested from Judge Aileen Cannon.”

In response, Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin stated that Raskin is “blinded by hatred of President Trump” and emphasized that the department is “the most transparent in history due in part to our efforts to expose the weaponization” of the department under President Joe Biden. Gilmartin asserted that any material subject to Cannon’s order was redacted and that her gag order was not violated.

“Jack 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,” Gilmartin added. “The accusations made by Raskin are unfounded.”