It looks like prosecuting President Donald Trump wasn’t enough. The Biden-era Justice Department also kept tabs on who people in Trump’s orbit were talking to – including his lawyers.
According to a report [1] in Just the News, newly declassified records show FBI investigators working with Special Counsel Jack Smith used a pen register/trap-and-trace on the phone of Trump co- campaign manager Susie Wiles during the classified-documents investigation.
A pen register/trap-and-trace is a surveillance tool that lets investigators see who is communicating with whom and when, but not what is actually being said. It can collect information such as incoming and outgoing phone numbers, call times and other routing information. In simple terms, investigators can see the communication trail, but they generally can’t listen to or record the conversation itself.
The surveillance conducted by the Biden administration did not capture the contents of the calls (or texts) they were spying on, but recorded information such as phone numbers, timing and duration.
According to the records, investigators tracked Wiles’ contacts with at least 21 Trump-affiliated lawyers, plus campaign advisers and at least five journalists between February and May 2023.
And this wasn’t some rogue agent freelancing after lunch. Records indicate the broader investigation had approval from senior Biden DOJ and FBI leadership, including Attorney General Merrick Garland. No surprise there.
Smith maintains politics played no role in his investigations. (Yeah, sure.)
However, secretly tracking the phone contacts of one of Trump’s campaign chiefs – including her communications with his defense attorneys and journalists – while Trump was running to unseat the sitting president – certainly doesn’t do much to bolster that claim.