The FBI monitored Melania and Barron Trump’s travel and tapped future White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ cellphone during Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents probe, surveillance the White House now brands a disgraceful abuse of power.
Newly released records show agents under the Biden administration plotted the timing of the August 8, 2022, search of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach home by tracing the first family’s movements, then later ran detailed logs of Wiles’ calls as she helped run Trump’s political operation. The White House Government Transparency Task Force put the memos, emails, and call records out Monday.
New York Post reporting on the release lays out how the bureau’s work reached beyond Trump himself to his wife, his then-minor son, and the aide who would become chief of staff. A federal judge threw out the underlying documents case in July 2024 after finding Smith had been unlawfully appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis did not say much about what the files show.
"Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power."
She added the core charge from the administration’s view.
"Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple. Those responsible must be held accountable."
In late May 2022, FBI agents exchanged emails laying out next steps for the warrant. One agenda item was blunt: “Finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s travel (type of aircraft and specific timeline).” Agents also planned to contact the Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office, swear out the warrant, and lock in coordination among the FBI, Justice Department, and Secret Service in West Palm Beach.
A related note made the operational preference clear: “Any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago.” The bureau carried out the raid on August 8, 2022, searching Trump’s office and both of the first couple’s bedrooms.
About a month before that raid, an unnamed special agent raised internal concerns that the bureau lacked legal authority to search the former president’s office or bedroom and suggested further talks with Trump’s attorneys. The search went forward anyway.
Readers who follow Melania Trump’s accounts of White House family strain will recognize how closely the first lady’s private movements now sit inside a law-enforcement paper trail from that period.
In May 2022, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray sent Garland a memo on the investigation. The memo warned the work could pull in top figures from Trump’s prior administration and “could potentially be disruptive to the democratic process if publicly disclosed prior to an election.” Wray added a handwritten line of his own.
"Merrick, I recomend you approve. CW."
Garland signed off on the wiretaps on Wray’s advice. The secret probe carried the internal title “Plasmic Echo.” It focused on whether Trump had illegally kept national security papers after leaving office and on grand jury questions about possible obstruction and whether he had falsely claimed all classified material had gone back to the National Archives.
That same special counsel later faced sustained pushback on Capitol Hill, including moments when Jack Smith stood by his Trump cases under Senate Republican questioning about political targeting.
After the raid, attention shifted to Susie Wiles. From February to May 2023, the FBI monitored her cellphone. Agents tracked calls with nearly two dozen lawyers tied to Trump, plus campaign aides, political advisers, and some journalists. Most identities stayed redacted. Kash Patel, who was out of government at the time and is now FBI director, was a named exception in the logs.
The records show near-constant activity, calls roughly every 10 minutes. On March 9, 2023, alone, Wiles made or received 39 calls. Early-evening entries that day include short bursts with campaign and lawyer numbers and a longer contact with “Lawyer 12.”
Agents also logged Trump himself. One May 19, 2023, entry reads: “2:05 pm The FPOTUS Vanity Number called WILES for 16 minutes and 11 seconds.” Other notes capture brief lawyer contacts in March and an ABC News reporter’s late-February call lasting two minutes and 36 seconds.
Coverage of Melania’s own comments on time apart from Barron sits in a different lane from these investigative logs, yet both threads keep the first family’s private orbit in public view.
In April 2023, Wiles met FBI agents for an interview in Jacksonville, Florida. On April 10, the Washington Field Office reviewed her telephonic activity “to determine contacts of interest on the date of her FBI interview.” That day she spoke with Trump and several of his lawyers. She also took calls from a Washington Post reporter and Politico’s Florida bureau chief.
One bureau agent flagged a March 21 contact pattern with “Lawyer 7,” noting the pair’s only observed exchanges since the monitoring began. A March 24 field-office note logged another short call from the same lawyer. The files treat those contacts as investigative data points, not stray noise.
Wiles was then running Trump’s political operation as he prepared for the 2024 race. The monitoring window closed in May 2023. The documents case itself ended in July 2024 when a federal judge ruled Smith’s appointment by Garland unlawful and threw the prosecution out.
Separate public chapters, from Melania defending the president’s record on Fox & Friends to stretches when she stayed out of view, show a first lady who has long drawn intense scrutiny. The newly released files add a harder edge: travel tracing on her and Barron, and months of call logs on the aide closest to the political fight.
The paper trail runs from Wray’s May 2022 memo and handwritten approval note, through the late-May planning emails that treated Melania and Barron’s aircraft and timeline as operational details, to the 2023 phone monitoring that captured lawyers, aides, journalists, and Trump’s own “vanity number.” Garland’s sign-off put Justice Department leadership on the line for the wiretaps.
Smith’s team pursued a case that a judge later wiped out over the appointment itself. The raid still happened. The bedrooms still got searched. The call logs still got built. None of that required inventing a new theory of power; it required only the old one, that a former president’s family travel and his top political aide’s phone were fair game inside a documents probe.
Taxpayers and lawful residents who expect equal rules, not special hunting licenses for political opponents, now have the memos and the timestamps in front of them. The White House has named the problem plainly. The remaining work is whether anyone who approved and ran the operation faces real consequences.
When federal agents chart a first lady’s flights and vacuum up a future chief of staff’s call log in a case a judge later tossed, the weaponization charge stops being a slogan and starts being a record.