Prosecutors examined whether Trump disclosed classified map on plane after leaving office | Donald Trump

Federal prosecutors examined whether Donald Trump showed a classified map to people on his plane after his first term, including to his now White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to justice department materials produced to the House judiciary committee.

The incident was described in a 13 January 2023 briefing memo prepared for the then attorney general, Merrick Garland – roughly six months before special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.

Trump’s alleged disclosure of the map, as described in the memo, would mark the second known time he waved around a classified map in front of Wiles. The indictment charging Trump also described an incident where he showed a classified map to people at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.

It was unclear whether the map Trump said to have brandished on his plane in 2022 and at Bedminster were one and the same. The map he had at Bedminster was a military map of Afghanistan, which Trump was showing associates as he criticized Joe Biden for the US withdrawal in 2021.

Trump’s disclosure of a classified map was not charged as a separate count in the indictment, likely because it happened after the withdrawal had been completed and so any information on the map could not be said to constitute national defense information.

“One other thing on the use of classified documents that I want to bring to your attention. We have identified a classified map that we believe Trump may have shown to individuals on board an airplane after he left office,” said the 11-page memo reviewed by the Guardian.

“Our investigation indicates that Susan Wiles, the CEO of Trump’s Super Pac, was aboard that flight and witnessed this event,” it said. A further two bullet points about “The Map” were redacted in the memo.

The memo also described the classified documents, which Trump retained in haphazard fashion in the basement of Mar-a-Lago after he left office and later ignored a grand jury subpoena for their return, as some of the most protected materials held by the federal government.

“Trump had in his possession some highly sensitive documents,” the memo said. “Prior to this investigation, one of the compartments housing one particularly sensitive document was accessible by only 6? people, including the president.

“And Trump possessed classified documents, pertinent to his business interests – establishing a motive for retaining them. We have those documents,” the memo added.

Referencing the January 2023 special counsel memo and other documents, Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, on Wednesday demanded additional information about the map and its alleged disclosure in a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi.

The letter attached a schematic manifest of the flight on which Trump allegedly disclosed the classified map in June 2022, flying from Palm Beach international airport in Florida to LaGuardia airport. Not including pilots, the manifest listed 14 people on board the plane.

Raskin’s letter asked to whom Trump had shown the map, who else was on the plane, and which documents Trump retained that were related to his business interests, among other things – and raised the spectre that the department violated a court order against releasing case files.

Last month, Aileen Cannon, the federal judge appointed by Trump who presided in the documents case, permanently barred the justice department from releasing Smith’s final report into Trump’s mishandling of classified materials after his first term.

Cannon dismissed the documents case in July 2024. Smith challenged the decision to the US court of appeals for the 11th Circuit. Following Trump’s election to a second term, Smith elected to drop the appeal and resigned.