Overview
- Rep. Jamie Raskin, in a Tuesday letter after DOJ sent Congress a January 2023 memo from Jack Smith’s office, called the material “damning” and set deadlines of March 31 and April 14 for more records and answers.
- The memo said some documents Trump kept were pertinent to his business interests, and that at least one item was so restricted only about six U.S. officials could access it.
- Investigators also logged specific risks, including a belief Trump may have shown a classified map on a June 2022 flight and a box that an aide scanned to a laptop and uploaded to a cloud service.
- The Justice Department and the White House rejected Raskin’s claims as baseless and said the records release complied with court orders, while Raskin argued it may have violated Judge Aileen Cannon’s secrecy order after she dismissed the case in July 2024.
- New reporting Friday said Smith first pursued a possible financial motive but later concluded it could not be proved, and that Susie Wiles did not recall the plane incident, underscoring gaps that Congress now seeks to fill through oversight.