Newly released records show Biden-era FBI agents tracked Trump family travel and monitored Susie Wiles’ calls with lawyers, conduct the White House brands a disgraceful abuse of power.
The White House on Monday released declassified records from the classified-documents investigation that detail how agents mapped Melania Trump and Barron Trump’s travel while planning the Mar-a-Lago search, then later monitored Susie Wiles’ cellphone in real time.
Fox News reported that the files cover the probe known inside the government as “Plasmic Echo,” later led by special counsel Jack Smith, into whether former President Donald Trump improperly retained classified documents after leaving office.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis did not hold back about what the records show.
"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 a second demand.
"Those responsible must be held accountable."
The trail starts months before agents ever walked onto the Palm Beach estate. In March 2022, FBI Director Christopher Wray secured Attorney General Merrick Garland’s official sign-off to launch a full-scale “Sensitive Investigative Matter” into classified records at Mar-a-Lago.
By late May 2022, operational planning emails and pre-raid checklists were already treating the former first family’s movements as an operational detail. Agents were directed to finalize their understanding of the former president’s travel, the first lady’s travel, and the minor son’s travel, including the type of aircraft and the specific timeline.
A declassified FBI internal email thread dated June 1, 2022, put the timing preference in writing.
"Any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago,"
That is not casual scheduling. It is a plan that built family travel into the warrant calendar.
On Aug. 8, 2022, FBI agents executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. They entered shortly before 9 a.m. The search began around 10:30 a.m.
The warrant authorized a search of Trump’s “45 Office,” storage rooms, and other areas used by Trump and his staff where boxes or documents could be stored. Agents took thousands of documents, including more than 100 bearing classification markings that ranged from confidential to secret and top secret. Those marked records were found in Trump’s office and a storage room.
An image later used in the indictment showed boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Mar-a-Lago.
Even before the raid, the FBI’s own Washington Field Office had warned prosecutors they lacked probable cause to raid the residence. Investigators complained that five weeks spent “fixated on probable cause for a search warrant” was hurting efforts to recover the documents. The raid went forward anyway.
The surveillance did not end with the search. Between February and May 2023, the FBI monitored Susie Wiles’ cellphone. Wiles, now White House chief of staff, was then a key Trump world figure whose communications mattered to the case.
Records describe a real-time monitoring tool that logged incoming and outgoing calls, missed calls, text messages, and voicemails. The logs cataloged interactions with more than a dozen defense attorneys, political advisors, campaign aides, Trump Organization staff, numbers linked to Trump’s personal office, and journalists.
Agents monitored the phone before, during, and immediately after her formal witness interviews. That includes her April 7, 2023, interview in Jacksonville, Florida. In plain terms, federal investigators watched her communications while she was dealing with lawyers and while she was sitting for questioning.
The records do not present this as a narrow check on one suspicious number. They describe a months-long pull of her call and message traffic tied to defense counsel, campaign figures, and the press.
The Plasmic Echo revelations landed less than a week after Smith faced a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over tactics in a separate probe, Arctic Frost, into Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election. That hearing also covered the collection of phone-record information involving Republican lawmakers.
Smith later led the classified-documents case that grew out of the Mar-a-Lago investigation. Prosecutors and FBI agents working under that umbrella interviewed Wiles. The newly released files now show how far the government’s monitoring reached into her phone traffic and into the travel planning around the former first family.
Garland signed off on the sensitive investigation. Wray ran the bureau that tracked the travel and monitored the phone. Smith’s operation is the one the White House now labels an abuse of power. The chain of command is not mysterious.
Pre-raid checklists required agents to lock down the former president’s, first lady’s, and minor son’s travel details before serving warrants. The June 2022 email made clear the preference to move only after the former president left the property. Months later, Wiles’ phone became a live feed of contacts with defense lawyers and political aides.
That is the pattern the documents lay out: treat the household schedule as operational intelligence, then treat a senior Trump aide’s attorney and adviser traffic as real-time case data. The White House release puts those choices in the open and calls them weaponization.
Taxpayers fund the FBI and the Justice Department to chase spies, terrorists, and violent criminals. When the same machinery maps a former first lady’s flights, a teenage son’s movements, and a future chief of staff’s calls with counsel, the burden falls on the officials who approved it to explain the line they think they did not cross.
Political opponents are not fair game for secret travel tracking and phone monitoring just because a documents dispute got hot. Equal rules under law mean the same restraint applies when the target’s last name is Trump.
