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classified documents
‘Damning’ New Evidence Suggests Trump Stole Classified Documents to Advance Business Interests
"If the DOJ is so confident in Trump's conduct, why are they desperate" to hide former special counsel Jack Smith's report, wondered Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee.
Mar 25, 2026
Democrats on the US mHouse Judiciary Committee on Wednesday demanded that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice "stop the cover-up" of former special counsel Jack Smith's full investigation into Trump's retention of classified documents following his first term, after new material sent to the panel revealed that some documents were stolen to advance the president's business interests.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi about "cherry-picked documents" related to Smith's investigations into Trump's taking of classified documents, which he stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The DOJ has regularly produced documents for the Judiciary Committee as Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has sought to portray Smith as having a partisan vendetta against the president, said Raskin. Smith led investigations into Trump's hoarding of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results during the Biden administration. Last month US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, permanently blocked the release of Smith's final report on the documents case.
Raskin wrote Wednesday that even as Jordan has embarked on a "vindictive campaign" against Smith and has sought a narrow selection of material from the DOJ, Bondi had "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."
Those documents include a January 13, 2023 memorandum from prosecutors who said the FBI had determined Trump retained documents that "would be pertinent to certain business interests.” The documents "established a motive for retaining them" that related to Trump's businesses.
Trump and his family have garnered condemnation for profiting off the presidency, with the family raking in more than $5 billion in cryptocurrency profits since he took office for a second time, and Trump's two eldest sons investing in a drone company that is vying for Pentagon contracts as the president wages war on Iran.
The prosecutors' memo also says the retention of some of the documents represented "an aggravated potential harm to national security," with one "particularly sensitive document" accessible only by an estimated six people in the US government, including the president, before he took it to his private property.
Additionally, the memo says prosecutors had "identified a classified map that we believe Trump may have shown to individuals on board” his private airplane in June 2022. Susie Wiles, the CEO of Trump's super political action committee and now the White House chief of staff, "was aboard and witnessed this event. Raskin's letter includes a flight manifest listing 14 people who were aboard Trump's private plane when he allegedly showed the classified map, but all of the names were redacted.
Raskin emphasized that without access to the second volume of Smith's final report, the Judiciary Committee cannot confirm what the classified map shows, the relationship between his business interest and the classified documents, or what the especially sensitive material is.
The congressman noted that some facts are known about Trump's activities around the time that he allegedly showed the classified map:
We do know that around the time of this flight to Bedminster, President Trump was entering into partnerships with Saudi-backed LIV Golf and state-linked real estate firm Dar al Arkan. A month after this flight, in July 2022, President Trump played golf at Bedminster with Yasir al-Rumayyan, head of the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia—the same official who plied the Trump family with tens of millions of dollars as the family began to run out of money between terms... We also know that there are reports that Donald Trump, at one point while on the phone with his ghostwriter, “made a reference to having classified records relating to the bombing of Iran.” He also reportedly boasted that it was only the hawks who wanted to attack Iran, not him, and that he had Pentagon war plans “done by the military and given to me” about such a potential attack.
"If this map is related to our military posture in the Middle East, and it was in fact shown to any foreign official, Saudi or otherwise, that would amount to an unforgivable betrayal of our men and women in uniform who are currently valiantly fighting in President Trump’s disastrous war against Iran," wrote Raskin.
"It is now clear that DOJ is in possession of evidence that President Trump has already endangered national security to further the interests of Trump family businesses," he wrote. "It is time for you to stop the cover-up and allow the American people to know what secrets he betrayed and how he may have cashed in on them."
Raskin demanded information from the DOJ regarding who accessed the classified materials, whether any foreign actors were given access, and what the documents contain.
“Every new detail that comes to light about the report Judge Cannon has gone to great lengths to keep hidden underscores the same basic truth: The public is being denied access to critical information about one of the most serious national security scandals in American history,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of the government watchdog American Oversight. “While fragments of the factual record have seen the light of day, the full report remains under seal because Judge Cannon has prioritized the president’s personal interests over transparency. The public has a right to see special counsel Smith’s findings in full. Blocking the report’s release only serves to protect those in power and prevent accountability.”
After Raskin's letter was released, the DOJ took the social media to accuse him and Smith of being "blinded by hatred of President Trump" and pronounce the department "the most transparent in history."
"This letter is nothing more than a cheap political stunt, almost as if taking cues from members of the corrupt Jack Smith prosecution team," said the DOJ.
The House Judiciary Committee Democrats retorted that the administration "is doing legal gymnastics to prevent the American people from ever seeing special counsel Jack Smith's full report on how Trump stole classified documents to advance his corrupt business interests."
"If the DOJ is so confident in Trump's conduct, why are they desperate to keep Smith's report under lock and key?" they asked. "Stop the cover-up, release the evidence, and let the American people decide for ourselves."
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Trump Tries to Permanently Stop DOJ From Releasing Jack Smith Report on Classified Documents Case
"Does he want the Smith report to be locked up with the Epstein files?"
Jan 21, 2026
As his administration continues dragging its feet in releasing the Epstein files, President Donald Trump is pushing to keep another potentially damning set of Justice Department documents hidden from the public.
On Tuesday, Trump filed a 19-page motion requesting that the US District Court of the Southern District of Florida step in to prohibit the DOJ’s planned release of Volume II of the final report prepared by former Special Counsel Jack Smith next month. The volume relates to the president’s handling of classified documents after leaving office in 2021.
Trump was indicted by a grand jury for 37 felony counts following Smith's investigation, 31 of which involved violations of the Espionage Act, after transporting "scores of boxes" full of classified materials, including top-level military and intelligence secrets, to his home at Mar-a-Lago and showing them off to people without security clearances.
But Smith ultimately dropped the case in November 2024 after it became clear that Trump's reelection would shield him from legal liability.
It's strange for the President of the United States to be litigating in his personal capacity against the Justice Department he runs — but he's seeking an order barring "current, former and future" DOJ officials from releasing Jack Smith's second volume. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 6:38 PM
On January 7, 2025, just days before Trump reassumed office, the DOJ released Volume I of Smith's report, which pertained to Trump's attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election by spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud, which culminated in the attack on the US Capitol building by a mob of his supporters on January 6, 2021.
Though Trump's indictment in that case was also dropped following his reelection, the report was released under DOJ rules requiring public disclosure of all investigative reports after cases conclude.
That report described Trump as having undertaken an “unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power,” a scheme in which he knowingly spread information casting doubt on the election result even after his own staff confirmed it to be false and he acknowledged his loss in private.
Unlike the election case, the classified documents case was dismissed in July 2024 by the Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon of the same district court, who ruled that Smith's appointment as special counsel was unlawful.
Cannon also issued an injunction blocking the release of the report to Congress, but only until February 24, 2026, so as not to prejudice the legal proceedings against Trump's co-defendants, former aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, who were accused of helping him illegally stash documents and hide them from investigators.
Citing her previous ruling, Trump is now asking Cannon to permanently block the report, claiming that, because of her ruling against Smith, "all acts undertaken" by him, including the creation and release of the report, are "void."
Not only does he seek to prohibit the "current" DOJ from releasing it, but also "former and future" DOJ officials from ever releasing it, as it would result in the "public dissemination of sensitive grand jury materials, attorney-client privileged information, and other informationderived from protected discovery materials, raising significant statutory, due process, and privacy concerns for President Trump and his former co-defendants."
Trump's request to permanently spike the report immediately drew comparisons to the Epstein files, which remain almost entirely unreleased by the DOJ nearly a month after the deadline mandated by law, which was signed by Trump himself after being passed in November.
For over a year, efforts to halt the release of Smith's report have fueled concerns of a cover-up and raised questions about whether Cannon has any authority to issue rulings at all, since the case has been dismissed.
In a piece for MS NOW (then MSNBC) last year, after the first report was released, legal analyst Glenn Kirschner warned that if the second one were buried in perpetuity, it could allow Trump to escape legal consequences after his term is up.
"If there is no disclosure of Volume II to members of Congress, what might a Trump-led DOJ do to the evidence?" he asked. "Might it be destroyed in an attempt to make sure Trump is never held to account for the classified documents crimes? Recall that the documents case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the case could theoretically be refiled once Trump leaves office."
His colleague, former US Attorney Joyce Vance, noted the peculiarity of Cannon's assertion of authority in a case that had already been dismissed.
"The strangest thing about this entire proceeding is that Judge Cannon continues to issue orders when there is no case pending in front of her," she said. "That’s not how a court’s jurisdiction is supposed to work.”
After appearing at a closed-door deposition last month as part of an inquiry launched by Republicans, Smith is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday at 10 am ET.
Smith's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, told the Associated Press earlier this month that "Jack has been clear for months he is ready and willing to answer questions in a public hearing about his investigations into President Trump's alleged unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents."
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Cover-Up Feared as Epstein Files Law Lets DOJ Redact Info Sensitive to ‘National Security’
"Not national security that has anything to do with the national defense or harm to the nation," said independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. "But the self-serving kind that protects the system from the people."
Nov 20, 2025
After its near-unanimous approval in Congress and following months of sustained public pressure, President Donald Trump signed a law on Wednesday releasing the files from the FBI's investigation into the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The law is called the "Epstein Files Transparency Act," but critics fear that a key provision could allow the US Department of Justice to keep critical information from coming to light.
The law requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to "make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" related to the investigations into Epstein and his partner and coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell within the next 30 days.
But critically, it gives Bondi expansive power to redact large amounts of information, potentially burying material that may be incriminating to the president, whose relationship with the disgraced financier has become the subject of greater speculation with each new set of documents released.
One provision allows Bondi to redact documents to strike information that "would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution." Last week, Trump ordered Bondi to open investigations into Epstein's connections with several prominent Democrats: Among them are former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Lawmakers have raised fears that these investigations were enacted to give Bondi greater leeway to scrub information from the record. On Monday, Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), the law's Republican cosponsor, warned that the DOJ "may be trying to use those investigations as a predicate for not releasing the files."
But another largely overlooked section may give her even more sweeping authority. The law states that information may also be redacted "if the attorney general makes a determination that covered information may not be declassified and made available in a manner that protects the national security of the United States, including methods or sources related to national security." It also allows her to redact information deemed "to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy."
While the law requires Bondi to issue a written justification for each piece of redacted information and also clarifies that no file shall be "withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary," it does not define the criteria Bondi must use to determine whether something is in the interest of America's "national security," "national defense," or "foreign policy."
"One glaring loophole will prevent full transparency: It’s called national security," wrote independent journalist Ken Klippenstein Monday, as the House moved toward a vote on the files. "Not national security that has anything to do with the national defense or harm to the nation, but the self-serving kind that protects the system from the people by depriving them of information."
There are many cases in recent memory of the US using national security as a justification to withhold information from the public. Earlier this year, the Trump administration used its "state secrets" privilege to deny a judge's request to turn over information related to its extrajudicial deportation flights to El Salvador, arguing that it would compromise its diplomatic relations with that country. Meanwhile, past administrations have used national security to justify keeping the public in the dark about everything from the military's use of torture to the government's mass surveillance of American citizens.
While the primary interest in Epstein surrounds his alleged role in facilitating a sex trafficking ring for the political and economic elite, there are clear cases where the government could attempt to use national security as a justification to keep information hidden.
For example, recent documents have revealed the extent of his involvement with foreign intelligence and dealmaking. Drop Site News has reported extensively on Epstein's long history working as an informal fixer for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to secure deals with several foreign nations that benefited Israel and attempted to shape global politics, including in the United States, to its interests.
Klippenstein has also raised concerns about the inclusion of the word "unclassified" in the bill, which he noted "is an official word that in theory only exists when it comes to national security matters; that is, that the release of such information could cause 'harm' to national security."
He said he asked Massie and the law's Democratic cosponsor, Ro Khanna (Calif.), for comment on why that word was included at all since the law does not relate to national security. Neither responded.
But Massie told journalist Michael Tracey back in September that a similar provision to redact info related to “national defense” was included because, "You have to put that in there if you’re going to get them to sign it."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who fought against the release of the files until the bitter end but ultimately voted for the bill along with all but one member of the House, invoked what he called "national security concerns" in a last-ditch effort to stop the discharge petition that brought the Epstein bill to the House floor.
It echoed what Bondi herself said back in March when asked on Fox News why any information besides victims' names would need to be stricken from the record: "Of course, national security."
"If large sections of the files remain redacted or withheld, the public may face a truncated version of 'transparency,' one that protects many of the powerful rather than exposes them," wrote independent journalist Brian Allen. "This is not just a story about Epstein. It is a stress test of our system of accountability."
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