FBI agents under Biden tracked Melania and Barron Trump’s travel and tapped Susie Wiles’ phone in the Mar-a-Lago probe, a move the White House calls weaponized law enforcement.
Newly released records show the FBI monitored the travel of Melania Trump and Barron Trump while plotting the search of Mar-a-Lago, and later tracked the cellphone of Susie Wiles, who went on to become White House chief of staff, as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s documents investigation.
The surveillance sat inside the secret probe known as “Plasmic Echo,” aimed at whether President Trump illegally kept national security papers at his Palm Beach home after his first term. White House documents released this week detail the steps, the call logs, and the approvals that made it possible.
The New York Post reported that the monitoring reached the first family and the woman then running Trump’s political operation as he prepared for 2024.
In late May 2022, FBI agents exchanged emails about ramping up the documents case. One agenda item was blunt: finalize the bureau’s understanding of the former president’s, first lady’s, and minor son’s travel, including the type of aircraft and the specific timeline.
Another note made the timing strategy plain. Any search warrants would be served after the former president left Mar-a-Lago. Agents also planned to swear out the warrant and lock in coordination among the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Secret Service in West Palm Beach.
The documents show the bureau treated Melania and Barron Trump’s movements as operational data for the raid plan. The August 8, 2022, search then covered Trump’s office and both of the first couple’s bedrooms.
A month before the raid, an unnamed special agent raised a separate red flag. The agent questioned whether the bureau even had legal authority to search the former president’s office or bedroom and suggested more talks with Trump’s attorneys. The raid went forward anyway.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray sent a May 2022 memo to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. The memo warned that the sensitive investigation could reach top figures from the 45th president’s administration and “could potentially be disruptive to the democratic process if publicly disclosed prior to an election.”
Wray’s handwritten note on the memo left little doubt about his recommendation:
"Merrick, I recomend you approve. CW."
Garland signed off on the wiretaps. That approval chain sat under the Biden administration while Smith’s team pressed the Mar-a-Lago case and related grand-jury work on potential obstruction and whether Trump had falsely claimed all classified documents had been returned.
After the raid, agents turned to Wiles. Between February and May 2023, the bureau monitored her cellphone for calls with nearly two dozen lawyers tied to Trump. The logs also captured campaign aides, political advisers, and some journalists. Most names were redacted. Current FBI Director Kash Patel, then out of government, was not.
The phone stayed busy. Records describe near-constant use, with calls about every 10 minutes. On March 9, 2023, alone, Wiles made or received 39 calls.
Logged entries that day show the pace:
"6:00pm, Campaign 9 called Wiles, and they spoke for 39 seconds."
Minutes later came more short contacts with campaign numbers and lawyers, then a longer one:
"6:39pm, Lawyer 12 alled Wiles for 6 minutes and 50 seconds."
Later that evening, the former president’s “vanity number” reached her for just over four minutes. On May 19, 2023, the same vanity number called Wiles at 2:05 p.m. for 16 minutes and 11 seconds.
Bureau notes tracked even brief lawyer contacts. One Washington Field Office entry flagged a 41-second call. Another recorded a lawyer’s first call at 2:10 p.m. EST on March 21, followed by Wiles’ return call of 1 minute and 34 seconds at 2:59 p.m. Agents wrote that those were the only contacts observed between the two since the monitoring began.
Journalists appeared in the logs too. An FBI intelligence analyst noted an ABC News reporter called Wiles at 8:48 a.m. for 2 minutes and 36 seconds in late February. After her April 2023 FBI interview in Jacksonville, Florida, agents immediately reviewed her phone activity from that day. She had spoken with Trump and several of his lawyers and took calls from a Washington Post reporter and Politico’s Florida bureau chief.
A April 10, 2023, memo stated the purpose cleanly: Washington Field Office personnel reviewed Wiles’s telephonic activity “to determine contacts of interest on the date of her FBI interview.”
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis did not say much about the newly released file.
"Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power."
She added:
"Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple. Those responsible must be held accountable."
The documents case against Trump itself did not survive. In July 2024 a federal judge threw it out after finding that Garland had unlawfully appointed Smith. The surveillance records now surface after that dismissal, through the White House Government Transparency Task Force release.
The paper trail runs from the May 2022 Wray-Garland exchange, through the late-May travel and warrant planning, the August 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, and the February, May 2023 monitoring of Wiles while she ran Trump’s political operation and sat for the Jacksonville interview. Agents treated first-family travel schedules, bedroom search authority questions, and minute-by-minute call logs with lawyers and aides as routine tools of the probe.
What the file does not supply is the full unredacted roster of every lawyer, aide, and journalist on the logs, the precise court order language behind the phone monitoring, or a public accounting of who signed off on each step beyond the Wray recommendation and Garland approval. The released material still shows the reach: Melania and Barron Trump’s travel, the former first couple’s private rooms, and the cellphone of the woman who would later become chief of staff.
When federal agents map a former first lady’s flights and a political aide’s every call in a case later tossed for an unlawful appointment, voters get a clear look at how far the prior administration was willing to go.
