DOJ may have disclosed secret grand jury material to Congress, violated judicial gag order in Trump classified documents case

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Justice Department appears to have inadvertently provided Congress with sealed grand jury materials in the classified documents case against President Donald Trump, an apparent violation of a judicial order blocking the agency from disclosing such information.

And, according to House Democrats, the trove of previously undisclosed information — produced for Republicans probing former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost election interference investigation — shows the president had access to highly sensitive national security information after he left office and that he once shared a classified map with passengers traveling on his private plane.

The Justice Department has long refused to publish Smith’s report on his probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents, conduct for which the then-former president was prosecuted in 2023. The agency has repeatedly said it is under court instructions not to release the “Volume II” report, citing a January 2025 gag order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which barred the disclosure of “any information or conclusions” from Smith’s findings.

But, according to Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, some of that information appears to have made it into a set of documents the Justice Department provided to Congress earlier this month related to Arctic Frost and the classified documents probe.

Writing in a Tuesday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, reviewed by Courthouse News, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said a “significant portion” of the agency’s document production on the classified documents case includes pages marked as “sealed material” apparently barred from release by Cannon’s order.

Raskin pointed out that many of the documents were considered nonpublic information protected under section 6(e) of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, which governs the secrecy of grand jury materials. That information, the lawmaker said, would be a crime for Justice Department prosecutors to disclose to third parties — including Congress.

“Apparently blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against Special Counsel Smith … you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon,” the Maryland Democrat told Bondi.

Smith, who was permitted by the Justice Department to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a closed-door deposition and a public hearing earlier this year, was not allowed to discuss the details of his classified documents probe into Trump with lawmakers.

“The Department of Justice is under a court order not to release Volume II of this report,” an agency spokesperson told Courthouse News at the time.

But Raskin said Tuesday that the information disclosed in the recent documents drop “obliterates” the administration’s argument that it can’t disclose that information. “In short, the position of the DOJ appears to be that it can violate Judge Cannon’s order and grand jury secrecy whenever it sees an opportunity to smear Jack Smith,” he wrote.

Further, the top Democrat contended the documents provided to Congress by the Justice Department furnish “damning” new evidence about Trump’s handling of classified information while he was out of office.

In particular, Raskin pointed to a January 2023 memorandum in which prosecutors said Trump took classified documents, including a map, aboard a private plane traveling to his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in 2022. While on that flight, prosecutors said, the then-former president may have shown the map to other people on board the aircraft — including Susie Wiles, formerly the head of Trump’s super PAC and now his White House chief of staff.

The Justice Department included a map of the aircraft and a list of its occupants in its document production, but the names are redacted, Raskin told Bondi.

The 2023 memo also cites an FBI investigation that determined certain classified documents Trump retained were “pertinent to his business interests” and that the bureau’s conclusion established a motive for the president to take them from the White House.

And the memo, Raskin said, further states Trump had retained “highly sensitive documents” that if disclosed would represent an “aggravated potential harm to national security.” One such document, prosecutors noted, was so sensitive that only a half dozen people, including the president, would have access to it.

“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,” the lawmaker told Bondi. “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.”

Raskin demanded that the attorney general provide more information about the president’s handling of classified documents, including the full flight manifest from the Bedminster trip and information about which members of the Trump family were “made aware of the content” of sensitive documents.

The Maryland Democrat also called on the Justice Department to release all remaining files, memoranda and communications related to Smith’s classified documents probe by next month.

In a statement Wednesday morning, a Justice Department spokesperson called Raskin’s claims “baseless” and argued the documents release was in “full compliance with the law and the court.”

The “sealed” information provided to Congress, the spokesperson said, did not violate Cannon’s gag order because nothing disclosed occurred before a grand jury and any sensitive information had been redacted.

”As an attorney and law professor, one must assume Raskin understands this, and thus, reveals this letter is nothing more than a cheap political stunt almost as if taking cues from members of the corrupt Jack Smith prosecution team,” the spokesperson said.

The Justice Department also pushed back on the character of new claims about Trump’s handling of classified documents.

”Jack Smith’s team was desperate to prosecute Biden’s top political opponent, so it is no surprise that his files contain salacious and untrue claims about President Trump,” said the spokesperson.

Shortly after Trump was elected to his second term in 2024, the Justice Department dropped its prosecutions against the president, including the classified documents case. Cannon, a Trump appointee, reasoned at the time that publishing Smith’s report on the probe would threaten defendants in ongoing cases and that Congress had yet to request the report for legislative purposes.

Democrats, though, have argued that the cases against Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, have long been dismissed and that there is no justification for continuing to withhold Smith’s report.

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