The team working for Jack Smith, the former special counsel who led the federal cases against President Trump, put a tracker on the phone of Susie Wiles, who is now White House chief of staff, and FBI memos released on Monday, October 5, show agents used it to log her calls with at least 21 Trump lawyers and at least five journalists. The tracking was part of the investigation into whether Trump broke the law by keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, after his first term.
Quick Take
- FBI memos say agents ran a pen register on Susie Wiles’s phone from February to May 2023. A pen register is a tool that logs the numbers called and the times of the calls, not the words spoken.
- The log caught her calls with at least 21 lawyers tied to Trump, at least five journalists, campaign staff and political advisers.
- Wiles was co-manager of Trump’s 2024 campaign at the time.
- The memos were declassified, meaning cleared for the public to see, and released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force.
- Smith has denied wrongdoing. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 29 that politics played no part in his work.
Why Calls With Lawyers Matter
Attorney-client privilege is the rule that what a person and his lawyer say to each other stays private, so he can prepare a defense without the other side listening. A pen register does not record words. But the memos show that the people investigating Trump could see which of his lawyers phoned his campaign chief, at what minute, and for how long. Smith has denied wrongdoing. In his September 29 testimony he stood by his investigation and said he would not let politics play a role.
The memos are plain about it. One, dated March 24, 2023, reads: “[Lawyer 7] called Wiles at 2:04pm this afternoon for 41 seconds.” The same note listed two earlier calls between Wiles and that lawyer, with the exact times and lengths. Most of the lawyers’ names are blacked out in the released pages.
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Reporters and Advisers Were Logged Too
The same log picked up at least five journalists. In late February 2023, an FBI analyst wrote that a network news reporter had called Wiles at 8:48 a.m. and stayed on for 2 minutes and 36 seconds. Most of the journalists’ names are also blacked out. Two names were left showing: Kash Patel, who is now the FBI director, and John Solomon, a journalist who now serves as the unpaid chairman of the task force that released the memos.
Agents also looked at who Wiles was in touch with around her own FBI interview. She was questioned in Jacksonville, Florida, on April 7, 2023, and the memos say the team then went through her phone activity for contacts of interest on that date.
What Else the Memos Show
The FBI’s code name for the documents investigation was “Plasmic Echo.” According to the memos, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray asked in March 2022 to open it as a sensitive matter, then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recommended approval, and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland signed off with his initials.
The team also went through a 72-page federal campaign finance filing from Trump’s Save America political committee, which lists donors and vendors, and set up monitoring of his associates’ social media. On February 6, 2023, a member of the FBI team asked in an email about Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security adviser: “Has he endorsed Trump again?” Smith subpoenaed O’Brien, meaning ordered him to hand over records or testify, two days later.
What Each Side Says
A Trump administration official said of the memos: “These are First Amendment activities, reporting, social media, donating, political advice for campaigns, yet Jack Smith’s team seemed very interested in them.” Earlier releases had already shown that the FBI subpoenaed phone records belonging to Wiles and Patel.
Smith’s position has not changed. He has denied wrongdoing, and in his Senate testimony he suggested he would bring the cases against Trump again. Reports on the memos released Monday, October 5, carried no new statement from Smith or from Wiles.
Sources:
redstate.com, abcnews.com, cnn.com