Donald Trump’s chief of staff has been left stunned by news of the FBI doing its job.
Reuters reported Wednesday the bureau subpoenaed phone records for Susie Wiles, along with current FBI Director Kash Patel, in 2022 and 2023 as part of a broader investigation into the MAGA president’s alleged storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Those efforts apparently went as far as listening in on a phone call between Wiles and her attorney in 2023. Her lawyer was aware the exchange was being monitored. She was not.
“I am in shock,” Wiles told associates after learning of the extent of the probe, according to Axios.
The FBI’s actions formed part of a wider probe that was later placed under the leadership of Special Counsel Jack Smith. The Biden administration appointed Smith to investigate allegations Trump tried to overturn results of the 2020 election, and that he had hidden sensitive government information at his Florida resort.
Patel and Wiles were already known to have been targets of Smith’s investigations into those allegations. The New York Times reports “the fact that investigators obtained some of Ms. Wiles’s phone records was made public during the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents.”
The FBI director, dubbed “Keystone Kash” for his bungled handling of several high-profile investigations, personally informed Reuters of new details of the searches of both his and Wiles’ records.
“It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records—along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,” he said.
He has now fired 10 FBI agents over the phone record subpoenas and monitoring of calls. That purge, along with his disclosures to Reuters, comes just days after critics slammed the FBI director for disrespecting Trump on a call from the Team USA locker room in Italy.
The national hockey team had just won gold at this year’s Winter Olympics. In footage of the incident, Patel is clearly intoxicated. Trump, famously, does not drink.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
