Jack Smith’s investigators wanted to know whom one of President Donald Trump’s closest aides called and when. Newly unsealed court papers show how they got permission. The sharper question is what happened when those phone records led them to Trump's lawyers.
Two applications filed in February and April 2023 sought permission to monitor a cellular number the Trump administration identified as belonging to Susie Wiles, who then worked with Trump’s political operation and is now White House chief of staff. The public filings redact the subscriber’s identity. Federal judges Beryl Howell and James Boasberg approved the respective requests.
Smith’s team investigated government records and classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago, as well as possible obstruction. Prosecutors gave the court an investigative reason to monitor the number. They wrote that AT&T records showed contacts with at least nine witnesses or subjects within two days of interviews or grand jury testimony.
Investigators suspected additional calls might reveal efforts to contact witnesses after federal agents approached them. The applications described that suspicion alone doesn’t establish intimidation, obstruction, or any other crime, even if a phone call occurs near a witness interview.
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The government’s request went beyond a simple list of outgoing calls. The pen-register and trap-and-trace applications covered incoming and outgoing phone numbers, communication times and durations, email addresses, IP addresses, and device identifiers. Prosecutors also sought historical call-detail records, and each order authorized up to 60 days of monitoring.
The filings expressly excluded communication content. These orders provide no basis to claim investigators listened to conversations through this surveillance authority. But names, timing, and frequency still show investigators who were talking with whom, including who contacted a lawyer immediately after questioning.
Earlier declassified FBI communications show agents reviewing contacts involving 21 Trump-affiliated defense attorneys and at least five journalists. In a March 24, 2023 message, an agent noted that a lawyer had called Wiles, recorded the call, and compared its 41-second length with earlier contacts.
Another note tracked her phone activity after an April 7 FBI interview.
From Just the News:
The three-year probe of the ex-president — which put Joe Biden’s administration in charge of the legal fate of his GOP rival in the 2024 election — was approved at the highest levels of the Biden Justice Department, including by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray, the memos show.
In March 2022, Wray sent a memo to Garland and Monaco, seeking the attorney general’s approval to open a “Sensitive Investigative Matter” that would become Plasmic Echo.
“I recommend you approve,” Lisa Monaco wrote at the end of the memo, leaving her initials “LM.” Days later, Garland signed the memo with his initials, giving his approval.
The new applications don’t specifically alert the judges to possible monitoring of defense-attorney contacts. Investigators sought broad collection from the phone, so such contacts could appear whether or not prosecutors initially intended to focus on them. The critical unanswered question is what agents did after identifying those calls.
Federal law helps explain why the two judges approved the surveillance. Under 18 U.S.C. Sections 3122 and 3123, prosecutors must certify that the information is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation. Unlike a traditional search warrant, the statute doesn’t require probable cause. Meeting that statutory threshold, however, can’t answer every question about how investigators used the information.
Communications between lawyers and clients receive special protections, but a telephone call alone isn’t automatically privileged. The released applications alone don’t demonstrate a violation of attorney-client privilege. They do raise the question of whether prosecutors identified defense-related contacts, restricted their review, or used patterns in those calls to guide further investigative steps.
Smith has defended his investigations and denied political motivation. The newly disclosed documents don’t establish that either judge knowingly approved improper collection, that investigators intercepted privileged conversations under these orders, or that the surveillance itself violated federal law.
From Just the News:
Howell has been a central figure in Trump-related litigation for nearly a decade. As chief judge of the D.C. federal court from 2016 to 2023, she oversaw grand juries used by Russia collusion Special Counsel Robert Mueller and by investigators probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In March 2023, she pierced the attorney-client privilege between Trump and one of his lawyers, Evan Corcoran. In that case, she relied on the crime-fraud exception, forcing more testimony in the classified documents case. She also enforced Smith’s warrant for Trump’s Twitter account and fined the company $350,000 for slow compliance.
A second application to extend the pen register and tap and trace monitoring of Wiles’s phone came in April and was approved by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, another Washington DC-based jurist famously critical of Trump, the court records show.
Americans deserve something more specific than assurances. Who reviewed the defense-attorney contacts? What safeguards applied? Were any call patterns used to anticipate legal strategy? Congress should seek those answers, and prosecutors should be prepared to supply them. Court approval explains how this monitoring began.
The public still deserves to know how it was handled.