WASHINGTON — The FBI tracked travel by Melania Trump and her son, Barron, and monitored the cellphone of future White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles during special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into whether President Trump improperly retained national security documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office.
According to documents released Monday by the White House, investigators followed the first family’s travel plans while determining when to search Trump’s Palm Beach estate. After the August 2022 raid, agents also tracked Wiles’ phone to monitor her communications with members of Trump’s legal team.
The surveillance occurred during President Joe Biden’s administration as part of a classified investigation known as “Plasmic Echo.”
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized the wiretaps after receiving a recommendation from then-FBI Director Christopher Wray. In a May 2022 memo, Wray warned that the investigation could reach senior figures from Trump’s first administration and “could potentially be disruptive to the democratic process if publicly disclosed prior to an election.”
Despite that warning, Wray urged Garland to approve the surveillance, writing by hand at the bottom of the memo: “Merrick, I recomend you approve. CW.”
At the time, Wiles was overseeing Trump’s political operation as he prepared to run in the 2024 presidential election.
The FBI’s conduct was detailed in a collection of records released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force.
An exchange of emails between FBI agents, whose names were redacted, describes the bureau’s preparations in late May 2022. Those steps included completing a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, coordinating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which held jurisdiction at the time, and closely tracking Donald, Melania and Barron Trump.
One task on the agents’ list called for them to “Finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s travel (type of aircraft and specific
timeline).” The remaining steps were to “swear out the warrant” and
“finalize all coordination between FBI/DOJ/USSS” in West Palm Beach.
“Any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago,” another document stated.
About a month before the search, an unnamed special agent questioned whether the bureau had legal authority to search Trump’s office or bedroom. The agent recommended additional discussions with Trump’s lawyers.
The FBI proceeded with the operation on August 8, 2022, searching Trump’s office as well as the bedrooms used by him and Melania Trump.
The newly published records also describe the monitoring of Wiles’ cellphone from February through May 2023. During that period, agents tracked calls involving nearly two dozen attorneys linked to Trump. The logs also show contacts with campaign staff, political advisers and several journalists. Their names remain redacted, with the exception of current FBI Director Kash Patel, who was not in government at the time.
Agents additionally recorded calls between Wiles and Trump, identifying the former president’s number as a “vanity number” — a phone number designed to spell a memorable word. The documents do not disclose the word. Instead, they describe individual calls, including one entry from May 19, 2023: “2:05 pm The FPOTUS Vanity Number called WILES for 16 minutes and 11 seconds.”
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The daily logs suggest Wiles’ phone was almost constantly active, with incoming or outgoing calls occurring roughly every 10 minutes.
On March 9, 2023, for instance, Wiles made or received 39 calls:
The bureau’s Washington Field Office noted “that [Lawyer 7] called Wiles at 2:04pm this afternoon for 41 seconds,” one March, 24, 2023, email stated.
“[Lawyer 7] first called Wiles at 2:10pm EST on March 21, and Wiles returned his call for 1 minute and 34 seconds later that day at 2:59pm,” a bureau agent wrote. “These are the only contacts we have observed between the two of them since the PR/TT’s inception.”
Another late February missive from an FBI intelligence analyst noted that “an ABC News reporter called her at 8:48 AM for 2 minutes and 36 seconds.”
By April of 2023, Wiles had sat down with FBI agents for an interview in Jacksonville, Fla., and later had her communication records both immediately before and after that sitdown queried.
“On 10 April 2023, WFO [redacted] reviewed WILES’s telephonic activity to determine contacts of interest on the date of her FBI interview,” another memo noted.
On that date, Wiles talked to former President Trump and several of his lawyers. She also received calls from a Washington Post reporter and Politico’s Florida bureau chief.
At the time of the surveillance, Smith’s investigation was focused on grand jury proceedings regarding potential obstruction of justice and whether Trump had claimed falsely that all classified documents had been returned to the National Archives.
The documents case against Trump was thrown out in July 2024 by a federal judge who found Smith had been unlawfully appointed by Garland.
“Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple. Those responsible must be held accountable.”
