Biden-era FBI tracked Trump family travel and Wiles’ calls with lawyers in secret probe: docs

The Biden-era FBI tracked Trump family travel, including the First Lady and Barron Trump, and surveilled future White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' phone as federal officials worked the classified documents investigation reaching deep into Trump's inner circle, newly declassified records show.

Documents released Monday by the White House detail "Plasmic Echo," the probe later led by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump improperly retained classified documents after leaving office. The declassified documents show agents tracked the first lady and first son's travel while planning the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, then monitored Susie Wiles’ calls involving defense lawyers, campaign advisers and journalists.

"Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple," White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital. "Those responsible must be held accountable."

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The revelations come less than a week after Smith faced a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over investigative tactics used in his separate probe into Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election. That investigation, known as Arctic Frost, included the collection of phone-record information involving Republican lawmakers, while the newly released records stem from Plasmic Echo, the classified-documents investigation that ultimately led to the FBI's 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.

Operational planning emails from late May 2022, uncovered in the trove of declassified documents Monday, reveal that agents prepared for the Mar-a-Lago warrant execution using pre-raid checklists that explicitly required agents to "finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son's travel (type of aircraft and specific timeline)"

"Any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago," stated a document from a declassified FBI internal email thread dated June 1, 2022.

The FBI executed its search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 8, 2022, with agents entering the property shortly before 9 a.m. and beginning their search around 10:30 a.m., according to records previously reported by Fox News Digital. 

The warrant authorized agents to search 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 ranging from confidential to secret and top secret, which were found in Trump's office and a storage room.

The documents declassified Monday also uncover how the high-stakes probe was personally greenlit at the highest levels of federal law enforcement in March 2022, when FBI Director Christopher Wray got Attorney General Merrick Garland’s official sign-off to launch a full-scale "Sensitive Investigative Matter" into classified records at Mar-a-Lago. 

But, behind closed doors, law enforcement was locked in a battle over strategy, as the declassified records showed investigators at the FBI’s Washington Field Office openly fought back against the main DOJ, warning prosecutors that they lacked probable cause to raid Trump's residence and complaining that five weeks spent "fixated on probable cause for a search warrant" was actually hurting their efforts to recover the documents.

In addition to tracking the Trump family, the newly declassified documents unveil how Biden administration law enforcement officials monitored current White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' cellphone between February and May 2023 as well.

Using a real-time monitoring tool, the FBI compiled logs documenting incoming and outgoing calls, missed calls, text messages, and voicemails. The records show officials cataloging her interactions with over a dozen defense attorneys representing Trump and others across the investigation, as well as communications with political advisors, campaign aides, Trump Organization staff, numbers linked to Trump's personal office, and journalists.

The declassified documents from the probe reveal investigators monitored Wiles' phone in real time before, during, and immediately after her formal witness interviews with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors and FBI agents—including her April 7, 2023 interview in Jacksonville, Florida.