President Donald Trump maintained government documents relevant to his business interests after he left office, according to an internal memo from former special counsel Jack Smith’s office.
The memo, viewed by POLITICO, was transmitted by the Justice Department to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees earlier this month. It was turned over in response to Republican-led probes into the investigations Smith led during the Biden administration surrounding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office, as well as his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
“Process is very much ongoing but the FBI has already since found both — that classified documents were commingled with documents created after Trump left office and that there are classified documents that would be pertinent to certain business interests,” stated the memo, dated Jan. 13, 2023.
The second volume of Smith’s report on his team’s investigative findings, which centers around the classified documents case, is currently under a court-ordered seal. Democrats have been pushing for DOJ to release it in hopes that it could reveal damaging information about the president. New information about Trump’s conduct, unearthed in this memo, could only heighten the pressure on the administration to make the full report public.
It also could inform questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is due to invite Smith to testify in a public hearing on his Trump investigations in the coming months.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, alleged in a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi dated Tuesday that the memo suggests Trump “may have sold out our national security to enrich himself.”
Raskin also alleged that the DOJ appeared to have violated the judicial order compelling the seal of the second volume of Smith’s report in handing over some materials to Congress, including grand jury material.
A Justice Department spokesperson, in a statement Wednesday, rejected Raskin’s claims and called his move a “political stunt.”
The spokesperson said that it was unsurprising that Smith’s “files contain salacious and untrue claims about President Trump,” and the files handed over to Congress did not violate the court order, nor did they disclose relevant grand jury material.
“We understand that Jamie Raskin, much like Jack Smith, is blinded by hatred of President Trump,” the spokesperson wrote. “However, he needs to get his facts straight — this Department of Justice is the most transparent in history in part because of our efforts to expose the weaponization of the Biden administration in full compliance with the law and the court.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, also in a statement maintained that Trump “did nothing wrong” and called Raskin’s actions “pathetic.”
A spokesperson for House Judiciary Democrats pointed to the irony in the Trump administration claiming to be “the most transparent in history” when it was refusing to release Smith’s findings.
“Another day, another manufactured outrage from the left,” a spokesperson for House Judiciary Republicans countered.
The 2023 memo transmitted to Congress also stated that Trump maintained documents that were so sensitive that only few had access to them beyond the president, and the fact that he had materials relevant to his business interests suggested “a motive for retaining them.”
“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,” Raskin wrote in his letter to Bondi. “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.”
Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.
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