Biden's FBI secretly tracked travels of Melania and Barron Trump, monitored Susie Wiles' calls with lawyers

During the administration of former Democratic President Joe Biden, the FBI monitored the phone records of Susie Wiles, now White House Chief of Staff, while investigating President Donald Trump regarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence inFlorida.

Voz reviewed the files released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Working Group regarding "Plasmic Echo," the name of the covert operation that was later led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump in this case and regarding the events of Jan. 6. A review of the files published on the White House website found that, between February and May 2023, agents tracked the phone activity of Wiles — who headed Trump's political operation — to monitor her contacts with lawyers, campaign advisers and the press.

Other emails show that the security agency factored Melania and Barron Trump's travel plans into the planning of the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Fox News and The New York Post were the first media outlets to report on these files, and Voz examined the documents to verify their findings. As revealed in the files, the data collection method cited in the emails is PR/TT, a log of numbers, times, and durations of incoming and outgoing calls. In other words, the documents do not include what was said during the conversations.

According to the records, Wiles' phone was in constant use. On March 9, 2023, for example, she made or received 39 calls with the Trump campaign, lawyers and President Trump's own "vanity" number. An entry from May 19 notes that that number called her for 16 minutes and 11 seconds, though it remains unknown what was said during the conversation.

A report on those days explains that the objective was "to document WILES's telephonic communication with FPOTUS Donald Trump's attorneys and members of the 45 Office on and around 19 May 2023."

Journalists also appear in the records. A message from late February notes that a reporter from ABC News called Wiles at 8:48 a.m. for 2 minutes, 36 seconds. By April, Trump's then-head of political operations had already been interviewed by agents from the FBI in Jacksonville, and analysts reviewed her phone activity on the day of that interview, which included calls to Trump, several of his lawyers, a reporter from The Washington Post and the Florida bureau chief of Politico . The records also include contacts with Kash Patel, now director of the FBI, who was not a government official at the time.

The other part of the disclosed file pertains to 2022. An email exchange between agents in late May lists the steps to be taken prior to executing the controversial search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, including "finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son's travel (type of aircraft and specific timeline)." Another document states that "any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago."

Although the files reveal monitoring of the Trump family, they do not describe Melania or Barron as surveillance targets, and their movements are included in the logistics of the operation, which took place on Aug. 8, 2022, and included Trump's office and the couple's bedrooms.

A month earlier, according to The New York Post, an agent raised doubts about the FBI's legal authority to search the former president's office and bedroom.

The documents also include a memo from then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, dated March 24, 2022, requesting authorization from Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a full sensitive investigation, with approval dated March 28 and a handwritten note recommending its approval. The New York Post, for its part, describes a May 2022 memo in which Wray warned that the case could implicate figures in the Trump administration and disrupt the democratic process if it became public before an election, and reports that Garland authorized the surveillance on Wray's recommendation.

This case against Trump was dismissed in July 2024, following a federal ruling that determined Garland — who also served as Biden's attorney general — had illegally appointed Smith. Trump and his allies characterized this as a "witch hunt," along with other legal proceedings initiated by progressive prosecutors.

The White House described the events as an abuse against Trump: "Jack Smith's surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power."