Jack Smith Was Building a Case That Trump Stole Classified Documents for His Own Business Interests

Since his federal classified documents case against Donald Trump was thrown out by bootlicking executive branch devotee Judge Aileen Cannon on a technicality that argued he was not legally appointed to the position, former special counsel Jack Smith has largely disappeared from the daily political discourse of the United States. He has barely appeared publicly, and testified before Congress in only one instance this January that his team had indeed found what he considered to be “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” of Trump’s guilt in the election interference cases that were progressing in Georgia until U.S. voters collectively lost their minds and returned the man to the White House in the 2024 election.

What Smith and co. would have argued in the classified documents case, on the other hand, has been something of a mystery thanks to the DOJ’s gagging of Smith, but a newly unveiled DOJ memo shines some light on what kind of case Smith had likely been building. The memo implies that Smith was gathering evidence implicating Trump in taking top secret/classified documents that pertained to his own worldwide business interests, including some documents so sensitive that only a handful of people in the entire country had clearance to see them. These would be some of the very same documents that ended up sitting next to a toilet in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom, by the way.

NEW: Trump had business motive for keeping classified documents, Jack Smith finds

The special counsel’s team found Donald Trump held onto documents so secret only six people could legally review them — and believed his reason for doing so was personal financial gain. www.ms.now/news/trump-c…

[image or embed]

— Ana Cabrera (@anacabrera.bsky.social) Mar 25, 2026 at 5:09 AM

These revelations come from a Jan. 2023 “progress memo” from the DOJ that was obtained by the House Judiciary Committee last week, which was subsequently the subject of public statements from that committee’s Rep. Jamie Raskin (CA), and a letter to DOJ Secretary Pam Bondi detailing its contents. As Raskin put it in the letter, while mocking Bondi for seemingly unknowingly revealing more information on the Trump classified documents case:

“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, and that Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Donald Trump’s super PAC, witnessed President Trump showing off a classified map to passengers on his private plane. 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.”

“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 (despite constantly coming up empty-handed), 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.”

You know, just the sort of typical Trump scandal that would have immediately sunk just about any presidency prior to 2016, with a dash of DOJ ineptitude. One of course has to wonder about the nature of these documents, particularly that ultra-secret one–what specific purposes did Trump have in allegedly taking it for himself as he left office in shame following the attempted coup of Jan. 6, 2021? According to the memo, his own enrichment seems like the most likely answer. As the memo states: “Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests — establishing a motive for retaining them.” Those documents were subsequently found in an unannounced FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022, even after Trump and his lawyers had claimed to have returned all the classified materials in their possession.

The White House statement to this emerging story, meanwhile, is about as classy as you would no doubt expect it to be. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson had this to say to MS NOW: “It’s pathetic that Democrats with zero credibility like Jamie Raskin are still clinging to deranged Jack Smith and his lies in 2026. 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.”

We’d know much more about Trump’s stolen records case if Judge Aileen Cannon had not sabotaged the case and then covered up its details. If we manage to throw off this fascist regime and have Nuremberg-stye trials for its top criminals, Cannon should find herself on trial.

[image or embed]

— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) Mar 25, 2026 at 8:53 AM

Trump’s greatest and most beneficial ally throughout has been the judge he appointed: Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Just last month, Cannon ensured that the public would never see the rest of Jack Smith’s investigation materials in the classified documents case, blocking the DOJ and Smith from ever releasing its second volume of materials. We’ll never get to see, in other words, what convinced a grand jury to indict Trump on 37 counts of withholding classified national security information and obstructing justice. Unless, that is, there should be a blue wave in the November midterm elections that is so big, we end up with a Congress willing to impeach the likes of Judge Cannon for standing in the way of justice. Not likely, but we can always dream.