Newly declassified records show the Biden-era FBI tracked the travel of Melania Trump and Barron Trump, who was still a minor at the time, while agents planned the August 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago. The same document dump also reveals that investigators monitored phone metadata belonging to Susie Wiles, now President Trump’s White House chief of staff.
The records are part of a release detailing “Plasmic Echo,” the classified-documents investigation that was later handed off to special counsel Jack Smith. An internal FBI planning document directed agents to “finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s travel (type of aircraft and specific timeline)” before executing the search. In other words, they wanted to know exactly where a teenager was going before they showed up at his family’s home.
A declassified internal FBI email from June 1, 2022 stated plainly, “Any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago.” They waited until Trump was gone, then moved in. Agents ultimately searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022, recovering thousands of government records, including more than 100 documents with classification markings.
The files on the Plasmic Echo surveillance operation also reveal that between February and May 2023, investigators used a pen register and related tools to collect metadata from Wiles’ phone, including incoming and outgoing call information, missed calls, text-message metadata and voicemail activity. The people swept up in that net included defense attorneys, campaign advisers, Trump Organization personnel, political operatives, and journalists. The monitoring continued around the time Wiles sat for an April 2023 interview with Smith’s prosecutors in Jacksonville, Florida.
The White House did not mince words after releasing the documents. “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.”
The records also show the operation had sign-off at the very top. Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray asked Attorney General Merrick Garland in March 2022 to open the matter as a full “Sensitive Investigative Matter.” Not exactly a couple of rogue agents going off script. And the documents reveal that officials at the FBI’s Washington Field Office actually raised concerns about whether there was sufficient probable cause for a search warrant, while Justice Department prosecutors kept pushing it forward anyway.
These disclosures land on top of separate revelations about Smith’s election-related investigation, called Arctic Frost, which involved collecting phone records of Republican lawmakers. That was a different case, but the pattern is hard to miss. The Biden administration’s Justice Department was keeping very close tabs on Trump, his family, his advisers, and the press, all at the same time it was telling the public this was all just a routine documents dispute. Nothing to see here, folks, except the travel itinerary of a teenager.
Expect more documents to surface as Washington digs deeper into Smith’s investigative methods. Drop your thoughts in the comments or share this on social media, because something tells us the mainstream media will be busy looking the other way.
