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Newly released documents reveal the extent of the FBI’s monitoring of President Donald Trump’s now-chief of staff Susie Wiles, showing investigators tracked phone metadata reflecting her contacts with attorneys, journalists, campaign officials, Trump Organization personnel and Secret Service contacts.
Documents released Monday by the White House detail ” Plasmic Echo,” the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents and other presidential records that led to the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar- a- Lago and later included possible obstruction of the investigation.
The records show the FBI tracked Wiles’ phone activity from at least February through May 2023, cataloguing who called her, whom she called, when the calls occurred and how long they lasted.
The documents show Wiles was in contact with at least 21 attorneys, along with campaign personnel, Trump Organization contacts, Secret Service contacts and journalists, offering a fuller account of the reach of the bureau’s monitoring.
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Reuters first reported in February that FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau had subpoenaed phone records belonging to him and Wiles while they were private citizens as part of federal investigations involving Trump.
The newly released documents provide a more detailed picture of the scope and scale of the monitoring, revealing how investigators mapped Wiles’ phone contacts across Trump’s legal, political, business, media and security circles over several months.
Some entries name the contacts swept into the FBI’s monitoring of Wiles, including journalists associated with CNN, The Washington Post and POLITICO while dozens of others are identified only by labels such as “Lawyer,” “Campaign” and “USSS.”
Monday’s document dump revealed the FBI’s monitoring also swept in Wiles’ contacts with two separate Secret Service officials, identified only as “USSS 1” and “USSS 2,” extending the bureau’s mapping of her phone activity into Trump’s protective orbit. The records do not reveal what investigators were seeking to establish through those contacts, what was discussed or provide reliable durations for the calls.
A March 24 entry from that year shows investigators logged a 41-second call from “Lawyer 7” to Wiles and then examined earlier calls between the two, illustrating how investigators were not simply capturing isolated contacts but tracing patterns across her network. The documents do not explain what prompted that scrutiny or what investigators believed those contacts could reveal.
In another example, a March 9 log shows investigators cataloguing a series of Wiles’ calls with at least six contacts identified as campaign personnel, recording when the communications occurred and how long they lasted, but not the substance of the conversations.
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The probe was launched by the FBI and Justice Department in March 2022, with then-FBI Director Christopher Wray seeking authorization and Attorney General Merrick Garland approving the full investigation. The probe was later placed under special counsel Jack Smith, whom Garland appointed in November 2022 to oversee the ongoing investigation.
Wiles was running Trump’s political operation and serving as a top campaign adviser at the time, and later became his White House chief of staff.
“Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital. “Those responsible must be held accountable.”
Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert Victoria Coates told Fox News Digital the tracking into Wiles is “unprecedented, dangerous, and should be illegal.”
“The Biden FBI was following the precedent of the Obama FBI in 2015 when they used their authorities to surveil then candidate Donald Trump and his campaign at Trump Tower as well as other candidates notably my then-boss Senator Ted Cruz. It’s the ultimate political dirty trick,” said Coates.
Coates argued that the breadth of the FBI’s tracking raises concerns about investigative overreach, pointing to what she characterized as a stark contrast with the Justice Department’s handling of President Joe Biden’s classified-documents case.
“No, particularly by the Justice Department’s own very low standards in dealing with President Biden’s classified-document violations from his time as vice president, which were far more egregious than anything retained at Mar-a-Lago,” Coates said.
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She also warned that tracking Wiles’ communications with attorneys and journalists carries broader implications for future presidential campaigns.
“In our increasingly digital world, it raises the grim specter of future campaigns where an incumbent can weaponize the private communications of not only a candidate and his family, but also his staff,” Coates said.
The declassified documents also show agents gathering details about the travel of Melania Trump and her son, Barron, as the FBI planned for a potential search of Mar-a-Lago.
Operational planning emails included pre-raid checklists directing agents to “finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s travel,” including the type of aircraft and specific travel timeline, as investigators worked to determine when the warrant would be executed.
The FBI executed the search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 8, 2022. Agents entered the property shortly before 9 a.m. and began searching around 10:30 a.m., according to records previously reported by Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital’s Stepheny Price and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.
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