The newly disclosed Jack Smith team memo advances a more specific theory of why President Donald Trump retained classified material after leaving office in 2021: prosecutors believed some of the documents were relevant to his business interests, and that relevance could help establish motive.
House Judiciary Democrats say the memo shows Trump kept records whose disclosure posed “aggravated potential harm to national security,” including one document accessible to only six people in government and other materials described as among the most sensitive handled by presidents and top national security officials.
More than 300 documents with classified markings were ultimately recovered from Mar-a-Lago after Trump took hundreds of classified pages with him when he left the White House in 2021.
The memo states that the FBI had found classified documents that “would be pertinent to certain business interests,” and prosecutors assessed that those documents “established a motive for retaining them.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, seized on that point in demanding answers from Attorney General Pam Bondi, arguing that lawmakers still do not know which Trump business interests were implicated or how directly the records could have benefited them.
The memo itself does not identify the underlying documents, the business entities involved, or whether prosecutors could have proven a financial-gain theory at trial.
However, Raskin tied the timing to Trump family dealmaking around the same period. He wrote that around the time of the June 2022 Bedminster flight, Trump was entering partnerships with Saudi-backed LIV Golf and state-linked real estate firm Dar al Arkan.
The memo also describes an alleged June 2022 incident aboard a private flight to Bedminster, New Jersey, in which Trump showed a classified map to passengers. Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Trump’s super PAC and now White House chief of staff, is identified as among the witnesses prosecutors believed were present.
It does not describe what the map depicted, but Raskin asked Bondi for a full passenger manifest, the map’s subject matter, and whether any foreign officials may have seen it.
Prior to this, allegations have already been made that Trump shared classified materials, including plans for military action in Iran during a meeting linked to a book project for former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and that he had previously shown off a classified map while cautioning an aide not to come too close because the aide lacked clearance.
The memo surfaced after the DOJ sent investigative materials from Smith’s Trump probes to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees as part of Republican-led reviews of those cases. House Judiciary Democrats said they obtained it from that disclosure, and Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley also shared the files, which then reached the press.
Raskin argues the DOJ may have violated US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order barring release of Smith’s report and “any information or conclusions” from it. Cannon had dismissed the classified-documents case on grounds tied to Smith’s appointment, and her sealing order has kept the public from seeing Volume II of Smith’s final report.
The Trump administration has answered with flat denial. DOJ called Raskin’s allegations “baseless,” described the memo as containing “salacious and untrue claims,” and insisted Cannon’s order and grand jury secrecy rules were not violated.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson similarly dismissed the disclosures as recycled partisan attacks and said Trump “did nothing wrong.”
Smith is a career prosecutor who served as the DOJ’s special counsel under the Biden administration, overseeing the federal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
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