A routine document batch sent to Congress may have accidentally blown the lid off the very secret the Justice Department was trying to keep.
However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wasted no time dismissing the latest Democratic push on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, calling it a “cheap political stunt” built on “untrue and salacious” and “unverified” allegations that never even made it into a formal indictment.
The pushback came after Rep. Jamie Raskin went public with claims that a Justice Department memo, sent to Congress as part of a routine document batch, contained what he described as “damning evidence” that President Donald Trump may have held onto classified materials to serve his personal business interests.
“He took untrue and salacious claims in a memo that was produced by Jack Smith, who has been completely discredited for his lawfare and his witch hunts against this president,” Leavitt continued. “And that information was unverified. It never even made it into the indictment because it was so unverified. And what happened to that indictment anyway? It was thrown out.”
Leavitt’s remarks drew their own wave of reaction online, with critics accusing her of performing rhetorical gymnastics on behalf of the president.
“This one is going to get her comeuppance one day, and when she does, it’s going to be ugly. I don’t know how she can live with herself,” one critic said.
But the White House appeared in sync with its defense.
Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson had already set the tone, calling Raskin a Democrat with “zero credibility” still “clinging to deranged Jack Smith and his lies in 2026,” and insisting Trump had done nothing wrong, proof of which, she argued, was his victory over what she called the Biden Justice Department’s “unprecedented lawfare campaign.”
The Justice Department echoed the White House line, calling suggestions of wrongdoing “baseless” and flatly denying that any protected grand jury material had been improperly shared. Officials also moved to discredit the underlying allegations as unreliable, framing Raskin’s claims as a political exercise rather than a legitimate oversight effort.
Raskin, a former professor of constitutional law, is not letting it go.
The Maryland congressman went on offense this week, arguing that Justice Department officials had effectively undermined their own case for secrecy. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, he wrote that in the scramble to dig up anything that could be used to discredit special counsel Jack Smith, officials had overlooked what was hiding in plain sight in the documents they voluntarily handed over. He called it a remarkable own goal, prosecutors building a shield, only to accidentally hand over the sword.
“We all saw President Trump’s piles of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago ballrooms and bathrooms,” Raskin wrote in a public statement. “But why did he take them? New documents obtained by @HouseJudiciary reveal the president may have taken the documents and sold out our national security to enrich himself—and the DOJ is working hard to block the evidence.”
The memo at the center of the dispute, according to Raskin’s letter, was compiled by prosecutors in early 2023 as they built their criminal case.
Among its contents: a June 2022 flight to Trump’s Bedminster golf club during which he allegedly spoke openly about retaining a Pentagon “plan of attack” and may have carried classified materials, including a map prosecutors believed he showed to others. Investigators also concluded Trump appeared to have kept documents “pertinent to his business interests,” a detail that forms the core of Raskin’s current argument.
In his letter to Bondi, Raskin turned up the pressure: “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. 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.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing throughout, maintaining that as president, he had the authority to retain the documents and that they had been declassified.
The case has not moved. After Trump’s 2024 election victory, federal prosecutors dropped the charges, citing the longstanding policy against indicting a sitting president. A final report by Smith remains blocked from public release under a federal court order, a fact Raskin’s allies say only deepens the need for transparency.
Online, the response split predictably. Supporters rallied behind Raskin’s push, praising his persistence.
“Rep. Raskin is relentless and resolute in finding and exposing truth,” one commenter wrote on HuffPost.
Others were more blunt, arguing that Trump’s track record made the allegations entirely plausible.
Trump’s backers fired back with equal force on Raskin’s social media post. “If Jamie’s mouth is open, he is lying,” one wrote. Another accused him of recycling tired attacks: “You can’t beat Trump. You should know that by now.”
Several pointed to Trump’s presidential authority over classification, arguing the entire premise of the investigation was flawed from the start.
Leavitt herself was not spared. Critics questioned how she could invoke credibility as a standard while serving as the administration’s chief spokesperson.
“How can Karoline Leavitt accuse anyone of having ‘zero credibility?’ Endless hypocrisy,” one commenter wrote. Congressman Jamie Raskin is a constitutional lawyer and Leavitt is what? I’ll wait….” another viewer wrote.