WASHINGTON — Attorney General Pam Bondi may have accidentally handed Democrats a political weapon against President Trump by mistakenly releasing a bombshell Jack Smith memo revealing investigators had established a "motive" behind Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents — one tied to his "business interests."
"We believe that it was mistakenly released," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story in an interview Wednesday, adding a sharp dig at the Justice Department: "Because the Justice Department only tells the truth by accident."
The 2023 progress memo from former Special Counsel Jack Smith stated that "Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests — establishing a motive for retaining them."
Raskin, in a scathing letter to Bondi reviewed by MS NOW, went further: "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, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests."
"This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself," he added in the letter.
Trump was indicted on 37 felony counts in 2023 for allegedly illegally possessing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago before the charges were dismissed in 2024. The White House responded to the new disclosures by calling Raskin a man with "zero credibility," insisting "President Trump did nothing wrong."
Raskin said he has not been permitted to read the full Smith report, but opined that Trump has "turned the presidency into a private moneymaking operation."
And he treats all public documents as his own property.
"That's what led to the document pilfering case. This little glimpse we got into his treatment of some of the documents shows that he views even the most top-secret documents in the country as his personal property to do with as he wishes," he said.
Raskin called for making Smith's report public and warned of a coming "reckoning with the reality of this massive corruption of the government."