'Damning' new Jack Smith memo reveals Trump wanted to profit off classified documents

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith raises his hand to swear in, before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 22, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

New revelations have emerged in President Donald Trump's classified documents case, per a "damning" memo obtained by MS NOW, showing that he seemingly intended to profit from illegally retaining the sensitive materials.

According to the report published Friday, special counsel Jack Smith determined that Trump had retained "secret documents that related to his worldwide business interests," revealing a key potential motive for his dogged efforts to hang onto them. Trump held the documents, often in questionable places, at his Mar-a-Lago resort, after departing the White House in 2021, later insisting that he had the right to retain them and that he had declassified them with his mind before leaving office. He was indicted on 32 felony counts related to his retention of the materials, and an additional eight charges for conspiracy to obstruct justice, but the case was halted after his reelection.

The revelations about Trump's business motive originate from a January 2023 progress memo produced by Smith's office, though the specific businesses and how they relate to the classified information were not disclosed.

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

As MS NOW's report explained, Trump's motive for retaining the materials had, up until now, been largely uncertain. Trump himself has long insisted that he had every right to retain the documents, likening them to the materials kept on hand by his predecessors for their presidential libraries. Some reports indicated that Trump seemed to show off the documents to impress people who visited Mar-a-Lago, while other critics warned that he may have been attempting to sell the sensitive information.

"Trump’s reason for taking hundreds of pages of classified documents when he left office in January 2021 — and then concealing them when the Justice Department subpoenaed him for their return in May 2022 — has been one of the larger mysteries of the case," MS NOW explained. "FBI agents conducting an unannounced search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 discovered hundreds more pages of top-secret records that Trump and his lawyers had failed to return to the government after claiming they had fully returned all classified materials."

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin cited this memo in a scathing letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, accusing the agency of covering up Trump's misdeeds while scrambling to find incriminating evidence against Smith.

“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,” Raskin wrote “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.”

The congressman further added: "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."

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