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Newly released documents reveal the extent of the FBI’s surveillance of Susie Wiles, now President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, showing investigators tracked phone metadata reflecting her contacts with lawyers, journalists, campaign officials, Trump Organization staff 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 search of Mar-a Lago in 2022 and later included possible obstruction of the investigation.
Records show the FBI tracked Wiles’ phone activity from at least February to May 2023, listing who called her, who she called, when the calls occurred and how long they lasted.
The documents show that Wiles was in contact with at least 21 lawyers, as well as campaign staff, Trump Organization contacts, the Secret Service and journalists, offering a fuller account of the scope of the office’s surveillance.
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White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles during a roundtable discussion in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, Monday, December 8, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Reuters first reported in February that FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau 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 surveillance, revealing how investigators mapped Wiles’ telephone contacts in Trump’s legal, political, business, media and security circles over several months.
Some entries name contacts involved in the FBI’s surveillance of Wiles, including journalists associated with CNN, the Washington Post and Politico, while dozens of others are identified only by labels such as “Attorney,” “Campaign” and “USSS.”
The documents released Monday revealed that FBI surveillance also swept Wiles’ contacts with two separate Secret Service officials, identified only as “USSS 1” and “USSS 2,” extending the bureau’s mapping of his telephone activity into Trump’s protective orbit. The records do not reveal what investigators sought to establish through these contacts, what was discussed or provide reliable durations for the calls.
An entry from March 24 of that year shows that investigators recorded a 41-second call from “Attorney 7” to Wiles and then reviewed previous calls between the two, illustrating how investigators were not just capturing isolated contacts but tracing patterns across his network. The documents do not explain what prompted the review or what investigators thought the contacts might reveal.
In another example, a March 9 log shows investigators cataloging a series of calls from Wiles with at least six contacts identified as campaign staffers, recording when the communications took place and their duration, but not the content of the conversations.
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Former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, center, and his attorney Lanny Breuer, center back, arrive in a hearing room in the Rayburn House office building after a break in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, as part of its oversight of the DOJ investigations into President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
The investigation was launched by the FBI and Department of Justice in March 2022, with then-FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting authorization and Attorney General Merrick Garland approving the full investigation. The investigation was then turned over to Special Counsel Jack Smith, whom Garland appointed in November 2022 to oversee the ongoing investigation.
Wiles ran Trump’s political operations and was a top campaign adviser at the time, before later becoming his White House chief of staff.
“Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a shameful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is the militarization 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 that the hunt for Wiles was “unprecedented, dangerous and should be illegal.”
“Biden’s FBI followed the precedent of Obama’s FBI in 2015, when it used its authorities to surveil then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign at Trump Tower, as well as other candidates, including my boss at the time, Sen. Ted Cruz. It’s the ultimate political dirty trick,” Coates said.
Coates argued that the scale of the FBI’s search raises concerns about overreach, highlighting what she called a stark contrast with the Justice Department’s handling of President Joe Biden’s classified documents case.
“No, especially in light of the Justice Department’s very low standards in handling President Biden’s classified material violations from his tenure as vice president, which were far more egregious than anything held up at Mar-a-Lago,” Coates said.
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The lawyer for White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has reportedly denied consenting to the FBI recording his client in 2023. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
She also warned that tracking Wiles’ communications with lawyers and journalists would have broader implications for future presidential campaigns.
“In our increasingly digital world, this raises the dark specter of future campaigns where an incumbent president could 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 a possible search at Mar-a-Lago.
The operational planning emails included pre-raid checklists instructing agents to “finalize the FBI’s understanding of the FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s trip,” including the type of aircraft and specific travel schedule, 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 August 8, 2022. Agents entered the property shortly before 9 a.m. and began searching around 10:30 a.m., according to recordings previously reported by Fox News Digital.
Stepheny Price and Alec Schemmel of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
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