ISTANBUL

US President Donald Trump allegedly showed a classified map he acquired during his first term in office to a group of passengers on a 2022 private plane flight, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing a prosecution document.

Trump also retained another sensitive record with only six high-ranking government officials had access to it, according to a prosecution memo released to Congress this week.

The Justice Department shared its findings, detailed in a 2023 document written by the team of then-special counsel Jack Smith.

The memo was written as investigators were moving to indict Trump for allegedly keeping sensitive government materials after leaving the White House.

It mentioned an early stage of Smith’s investigation and adds context to his probes, even as his final report remains sealed, indicating that Trump kept classified materials linked to his business interests.

The memo described a June 2022 flight to Bedminster, New Jersey, where Trump allegedly showed passengers a classified map, without giving details on what the map showed.

A similar claim appeared in Smith’s 2023 indictment, alleging Trump shared a classified map related to a military operation and referenced a “plan of attack.”

Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing he was entitled to keep such records after leaving office in 2021.

The case was later dismissed by a federal judge over concerns about Smith’s appointment. Smith was appealing the ruling when Trump won a return ticket to the White House in November 2024, after which he dropped the case in line with Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

If Trump had not won another term, the evidence against him was "sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial," Smith said in a report released last year.

Though in 2016 Trump attacked his onetime presidential election rival Hillary Clinton for sloppy handling of emails, he has been dogged by reports that as president he showed classified intelligence to the Russian ambassador in the Oval Office, revealed UN Navy movements in the Pacific Ocean, and conducted a confidential war briefing in front of guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, among similar incidents.