WASHINGTON — A congressional Democrat has unveiled new allegations that President Donald Trump displayed classified materials aboard a private aircraft during a 2022 journey to his New Jersey golf resort, according to federal prosecutors’ internal communications made public Wednesday.
Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, who serves as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, disclosed details from a Justice Department internal document dated January 2023. The memo provides additional insight into the federal probe examining Trump’s possession of sensitive government materials at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.
According to Raskin’s correspondence, the prosecutorial memo describes a June 2022 flight to Trump’s Bedminster golf facility where the former president allegedly brought classified materials with him. Federal investigators wrote they “identified a classified map that we believe Trump may have shown to individuals on board,” Raskin’s letter states. The memo indicates that Susie Wiles, who would later become Trump’s White House chief of staff, was present during the flight and observed the incident.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into classified document handling resulted in federal criminal charges against Trump, accusing him of stockpiling highly sensitive records and interfering with FBI attempts to retrieve them. The indictment contained claims that Trump displayed classified military operation maps in 2021 and bragged about retaining Pentagon strategic documents from his presidency.
Trump has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings and argued he had authority to retain the classified materials upon departing the White House in 2021. He has also asserted, without supporting evidence, that he had removed their classified status.
The White House dismissed Raskin’s allegations, with spokesperson Abigail Jackson calling them unreliable. “It’s pathetic that Democrats with zero credibility like Jamie Raskin are still clinging to deranged Jack Smith and his lies in 2026,” Jackson stated. “President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented lawfare campaign against him and then won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide election victory.”
Following Trump’s November 2024 electoral victory, prosecutors dropped the case, citing established Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by Trump, has kept special counsel Smith’s final investigation report sealed after making several rulings that favored the former president during case proceedings.
Raskin revealed the memo’s contents in correspondence to Attorney General Pam Bondi, seeking additional details about the prosecutorial allegations, including passenger identities on the Bedminster flight and the geographic region shown on the classified map.
In his letter, Raskin stated that the Trump administration’s Justice Department provided the memo to Congress this month among a selective collection of materials from both the classified documents probe and a separate investigation into Trump’s attempts to challenge the 2020 election outcome against Democrat Joe Biden.
The Justice Department has shared investigation records with Congress in an apparent effort to undermine their credibility. However, Raskin warned Bondi that her eagerness “to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted” to attack Smith has resulted in her overlooking “damning evidence about your boss’s conduct.”
“It is now clear that DOJ is in possession of evidence that President Trump has already endangered national security to further the interests of Trump family businesses,” Raskin wrote. “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. Our country is at war, American lives are at stake, and the answer to these questions has never been more pressing.”
