The claim comes from a letter Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was released Wednesday and drew from what Raskin described as a January 2023 Department of Justice memo. In the letter, Raskin said prosecutors recounted evidence they had accumulated as they moved toward a felony indictment tied to Trump’s retention of classified documents after his first term.
Raskin’s letter said the memo described a June 2022 flight to Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on which prosecutors alleged Trump took classified documents. Raskin said the memo reported that prosecutors “identified a classified map that we believe Trump may have shown to individuals on board,” describing the alleged episode as one prosecutors believed occurred during the flight.
Raskin also said the memo described the FBI’s assessment that Trump appeared to have retained classified documents “pertinent to his business interests.” The letter framed the allegations as part of the broader public record about the classified documents investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, which had been long viewed as one of several criminal inquiries facing Trump in his second run for office.
In addition to the map allegation, Raskin said the January 2023 memo stated that prosecutors’ investigation indicated Susie Wiles—identified by Raskin as Trump’s future chief of staff—was on the plane and witnessed the episode. The letter also cited the Department of Justice memo as describing a broader pattern of handling classified materials, while Raskin’s disclosure added that prosecutors were building toward charges later filed months afterward.
The classified documents case ultimately produced felony charges accusing Trump of hoarding top-secret records and obstructing efforts by the FBI to retrieve them. The indictment included allegations tied to Trump’s conduct at the Bedminster club in 2021, including claims that he showed off a classified map related to a military operation and other allegations about boasting of having held on to a Pentagon “plan of attack.”
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing and repeatedly insisted he was entitled to keep classified documents when he left the White House in 2021 after his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, and he has also claimed without evidence that he had declassified them. Responding to Raskin’s letter, the White House pushed back, with spokeswoman Abigail Jackson saying in a statement that it was “pathetic” that Democrats with “zero credibility like Jamie Raskin” were “clinging to deranged Jack Smith and his lies,” adding that Trump “did nothing wrong.”
The Justice Department separately said Smith’s team “was desperate to prosecute Biden’s top political opponent,” and it argued that the files contain “salacious and untrue claims” about Trump. The case against Trump was abandoned after his election win in November 2024, with the Justice Department citing longstanding legal opinions barring indictments of sitting presidents, and a report prepared by Smith remains under seal at the order of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
Raskin said his letter to Bondi disclosed the existence of the January 2023 memo and requested more information about the allegations described by prosecutors. He sought details including the identities of the passengers on the plane to Bedminster and what country the classified map depicted, according to the letter.
Raskin further told Bondi that the Trump administration’s Justice Department produced the memo to Congress this month as part of what he described as a “cherry-picked” set of documents, and he said some of the provided materials included “damning evidence about your boss’s conduct.” In the letter, Raskin also suggested the Justice Department may have violated a protective order that Judge Cannon imposed, while the Justice Department called that claim “baseless” and said the documents provided to Congress did not disclose matters occurring before a grand jury.