DOJ may have disclosed secret grand jury material to Congress, violated judicial gag order in Trump classified documents [View all]
Source: Courthouse News Service
March 25, 2026
WASHINGTON (CN) — The Justice Department appears to have inadvertently provided Congress with sealed grand jury materials in the classified documents case against President Donald Trump, an apparent violation of a judicial order blocking the agency from disclosing such information.
And, according to House Democrats, the trove of previously undisclosed information — produced for Republicans probing former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost election interference investigation — shows the president had access to highly sensitive national security information after he left office and that he once shared a classified map with passengers traveling on his private plane.
The Justice Department has long refused to publish Smith’s report on his probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents, conduct for which the then-former president was prosecuted in 2023. The agency has repeatedly said it is under court instructions not to release the “Volume II” report, citing a January 2025 gag order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which barred the disclosure of “any information or conclusions” from Smith’s findings.
But, according to Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, some of that information appears to have made it into a set of documents the Justice Department provided to Congress earlier this month related to Arctic Frost and the classified documents probe. Writing in a Tuesday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, reviewed by Courthouse News, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said a “significant portion” of the agency’s document production on the classified documents case includes pages marked as “sealed material” apparently barred from release by Cannon’s order.
Read more: https://courthousenews.com/doj-may-have-disclosed-secret-grand-jury-material-to-congress-violated-judicial-gag-order-in-trump-classified-documents-case/
Link to Rep. Raskin LETTER (inquiry) (PDF) - https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/raskin-bondi-smith-classified-docs.pdf
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