By Newly released federal records are adding another extraordinary chapter to the Jack Smith investigations, showing that the Biden-era FBI tracked the movements of Melania Trump and her then-minor son Barron and later collected phone records belonging to Susie Wiles, one of Donald Trump’s closest political advisers.
The disclosures broaden the picture of how deeply federal investigators reached into Trump’s family, political operation and legal circle while the Justice Department was pursuing the man who would become President Joe Biden’s principal opponent in the 2024 election.
The records, explained The New York Post, concern an FBI investigation code-named “Plasmic Echo,” the classified-documents probe later taken over by Smith after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him special counsel in November 2022. The White House released the documents Monday as part of its Government Transparency Task Force.
Among the records are FBI plans to track the travel of Trump, Melania Trump and Barron Trump as agents prepared to search Mar-a-Lago in 2022.
An internal agenda item from late May instructed agents to “Finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s travel (type of aircraft and specific timeline).”
Another entry stated that “Any search warrants would be served after the former President departs Mar a Lago.”
The FBI ultimately descended on Trump’s Palm Beach estate on Aug. 8, 2022, searching areas that included Trump’s office and living quarters used by the former president and first lady.
The surveillance did not stop with Trump’s property.
Documents show investigators later obtained call-detail records associated with Wiles, who was running Trump’s political operation and would eventually become White House chief of staff. The records did not reveal what was said during the calls, but allowed investigators to track contacts, timing and duration.
Between February and May 2023, investigators documented Wiles’ contacts with Trump lawyers, campaign aides, political advisers and journalists.
One May 19 entry stated: “2:05 pm The FPOTUS Vanity Number called WILES for 16 minutes and 11 seconds.”
On March 9, investigators logged 39 calls to or from Wiles during a single evening period. Other records noted contacts involving members of Trump’s legal team and reporters from ABC News, The Washington Post and Politico.
Investigators also examined Wiles’ phone activity surrounding an April 2023 FBI interview in Jacksonville, recording contacts she had with Trump and others both before and after the meeting.
The disclosures are especially significant because they arrive amid a widening congressional examination of Smith’s investigative methods.
Separate records previously made public by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley showed that investigators connected to Smith’s election case obtained phone records involving Republican members of Congress. Smith acknowledged at a Senate hearing last week that his office obtained lawmakers’ toll records, though he stressed that those records contained metadata rather than the contents of calls or messages.
Grassley has also released records showing that Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation issued 197 subpoenas seeking information connected to at least 430 Republican individuals and organizations, including political groups, lawmakers and media companies.
The reach extended beyond elected officials. Grassley disclosed last week that Smith’s team obtained nearly 5,000 checks written by Trump donors across all 50 states, including checks containing donors’ home addresses, bank-account information, routing numbers and signatures.
The Plasmic Echo documents now place Trump’s wife, minor son and future chief of staff inside another sweeping federal investigative effort aimed at Trump.
The investigation originated before Smith’s appointment. A May 2022 FBI memorandum warned that the inquiry “could potentially be disruptive to the democratic process if publicly disclosed prior to an election” and could reach senior officials from the previous administration.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray endorsed moving forward, writing by hand: “Merrick, I recomend you approve. CW.”
Garland later appointed Smith to oversee both the classified-documents investigation and the separate investigation into Trump’s efforts surrounding the 2020 election.
Smith ultimately charged Trump with dozens of felony counts over his handling of classified material and alleged efforts to obstruct the government’s attempts to recover it. Trump pleaded not guilty.
But the prosecution never reached a jury.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified-documents case in July 2024, ruling that Garland had unlawfully appointed Smith and that the special counsel therefore lacked constitutional authority to bring the prosecution. Smith disputed Cannon’s reasoning and appealed the decision.
Smith’s second Trump prosecution, involving the 2020 election, also ended without a trial after Trump returned to the White House. Smith has continued to defend both investigations, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 29 that politics did not influence his decisions and that he would have pursued the cases against any former president under the same circumstances.
Republicans say the accumulating disclosures tell a very different story: a Justice Department investigation of a former president that reached his family, lawyers, political advisers, donors, journalists and members of Congress while he was preparing another campaign for the White House.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis called the latest revelations an abuse of federal law-enforcement power.
“Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple. Those responsible must be held accountable.”
Smith has rejected accusations that his work was politically motivated. During last week’s Senate hearing, he said investigators obtained congressional phone records because they believed Trump and his allies had contacted senators during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in an effort to delay certification of the 2020 election. Democrats have likewise defended Smith and accused Republicans of attacking prosecutors to distract from the conduct investigators were examining.
But the newest documents move the controversy beyond the indictments themselves.
They show federal investigators following the travel of a former first lady and a minor child, charting the communications network surrounding Trump’s future chief of staff and documenting contacts between political operatives, defense lawyers and reporters — all while the Justice Department was investigating the sitting president’s leading political rival.
Combined with the disclosures from Arctic Frost, the Plasmic Echo files raise increasingly serious questions about the scale of the federal government’s surveillance and information-gathering operation around Trump and the political movement surrounding him.
The question now facing Congress is no longer simply whether prosecutors had grounds to investigate Trump.
It is how far the Biden Justice Department, Jack Smith and the FBI were willing to go in doing it.
