New records in Trump documents case raise concerns over business conflict: US lawmaker
US congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
Photo: Reuters Newly released records in the now-dismissed classified documents case against US President Donald Trump raise fresh concerns over national security risks and potential private business motivations, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said.
The records, handed over by the US Department of Justice as part of the Republican-led panel’s investigation into former US Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump, show FBI investigators said in a 2023 memo that the classified documents kept by Trump after he left office were “pertinent to his business interests” and were found commingled with other documents created later, US congressman Jamie Raskin said.
Some of the classified documents were also “so sensitive that only six people in the entire US government had access to them”, while one box of documents was scanned, stored on a Trump aide’s laptop for nearly two years and uploaded to a cloud, raising further security concerns, Raskin said.
The newly released information also showed that Trump apparently took classified documents on a June 2022 flight to his New Jersey golf club and showed a classified map to then top campaign official Susie Wiles and potentially others, according to his letter.
Wiles now serves as White House chief of staff. “This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the cover-up reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself,” Raskin wrote in a letter sent on Tuesday to US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The release of the documents to the congressional committee may have also violated a gag order imposed by the Trump-appointed federal judge in the case, he said.
Trump was accused in the case led by Smith of illegally storing documents related to US national defence, including the American nuclear programme, at his Mar-a-Lago social club and obstructing US government efforts to retrieve the material.
Florida-based US District Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by Trump in 2020, dismissed the charges in 2024, ruling that Smith was improperly appointed as special counsel.
Last month, she blocked the Justice Department from releasing the prosecutor’s report on the case.
Trump was accused of illegally storing documents related to US national defence, including the American nuclear programme, at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Photo: US Department of Defence
原文链接: 南华早报