Biden-era FBI records show agents tracked Susie Wiles' phone contacts with lawyers and nearly 50 journalists during the Jack Smith probe, critics call it weaponization.
White House-released records detail how the FBI cataloged months of phone metadata belonging to Susie Wiles while she ran President Donald Trump’s political operation, logging who called her, whom she called, when those calls happened, and how long they lasted.
The logs, tied to the classified-documents investigation later run by special counsel Jack Smith, show contacts with at least 21 attorneys, campaign personnel, Trump Organization staff, Secret Service officials, and journalists from major outlets. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that records from first-Trump White House phones swept up communications involving government officials and nearly 50 journalists from Fox News, CNN, CBS, NBC, Reuters, and other newsrooms.
Fox News reported that the documents, released Monday and aired in Tuesday’s hearing, place the monitoring inside “Plasmic Echo,” the probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents and other presidential records at Mar-a-Lago.
Investigators tracked Wiles’ phone activity from at least February through May 2023. Entries labeled contacts as “Lawyer,” “Campaign,” or “USSS,” and some named journalists tied to CNN, The Washington Post, and Politico.
A March 9 log listed a series of calls with at least six campaign personnel, with times and durations recorded but not the substance of the conversations. A March 24 entry showed a 41-second call from “Lawyer 7” to Wiles, with investigators examining earlier calls between the two.
Two Secret Service officials appear in the records as “USSS 1” and “USSS 2.” The documents do not say what investigators hoped to learn from those contacts, and they do not provide reliable durations for some of the calls.
Wiles, now White House chief of staff, was a top campaign adviser at the time. Her attorney has denied that he consented to the FBI recording his client in 2023, according to the reporting on the newly released files.
The same investigative file shows operational planning emails and pre-raid checklists ahead of the Aug. 8, 2022, search of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Agents entered the estate shortly before 9 a.m. and began searching around 10:30 a.m.
One checklist directed agents to “finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son's travel,” including aircraft type and a specific travel timeline for Donald Trump, Melania Trump, and Barron Trump. That language puts family logistics inside the raid-preparation work, not merely the document inventory itself.
The FBI and Justice Department launched the probe in March 2022. Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray sought authorization, and Attorney General Merrick Garland approved the full investigation. Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to oversee the case.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis did not say much about the scope of the records haul.
"Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple."
Bis added that those responsible must be held accountable.
Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert Victoria Coates told Fox News Digital the conduct was “unprecedented, dangerous and should be illegal.” She tied it to earlier precedent.
"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."
Coates also argued the Justice Department applied a far lower standard to President Biden’s own classified-document issues from his vice presidency than it did to materials retained at Mar-a-Lago. In a digital campaign environment, she warned, an incumbent could target not only a rival candidate and family but staff communications as well.
Grassley’s Senate Judiciary presentation put journalist communications at the center of the political fight. The hearing record describes contacts involving reporters from multiple national outlets pulled into the same investigative net as campaign and legal calls.
RealClearPolitics later noted that documents obtained by Grassley have been cited as showing Smith’s team monitoring journalists and lawmakers, material now used in arguments for a dedicated anti-weaponization fund.
Separately, Reuters reported in February that current 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 new White House dump puts concrete call-log detail behind that earlier account for Wiles.
The released material catalogs metadata: counterparts, timestamps, and durations. It does not publish call content. It also does not state what theory of the documents case required mapping Wiles’ lawyers, Secret Service contacts, campaign aides, and reporters across a multi-month window after the Mar-a-Lago search.
That gap matters. Phone-record subpoenas can be lawful tools in a classified-documents or obstruction inquiry. Sweeping in nearly 50 journalists’ communications, plus a political adviser’s attorney list, still forces a basic accountability question about necessity, minimization, and political risk, especially when the same Justice Department faced sharp criticism over its handling of Biden’s own records.
Smith has since appeared for a House Judiciary Committee deposition. The documents now in public view keep the focus on how far “Plasmic Echo” reached beyond boxes at Mar-a-Lago and into the daily call patterns of Trump’s inner circle.
When federal investigators log a campaign adviser’s lawyers, Secret Service contacts, and a press corps roster inside a rival’s documents case, voters are right to demand a higher standard than “trust us.” Power that catalogs the opposition’s phone tree will always need daylight, limits, and consequences.
