This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.
When Special Counsel Jack Smith was investigating Donald Trump and people in his orbit, he ended up surveilling then-private-citizen Kash Patel and Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles during 2022 and 2003.
Patel, now head of the FBI, told Reuters on Wednesday that he found out about this, and the FBI buried the files in a “Prohibited” category deep within the bureau’s computer system so they would be extremely difficult to find.
Getting down to it – the subpoenas targeted metadata showing who called whom and when – called ‘toll records,’ as well as a recorded a call between Susie Wiles and her lawyer – which her lawyer knew about and didn’t tell her, according to Fox News. Technically, under federal law, the government can obtain toll records with just a subpoena and no warrant. Investigators insist they routinely pull toll records from prominent figures to establish timelines and verify involvement. Smith himself testified to Congress that records seized from Republican senators during the January 6 probe helped confirm the timeline of events, that no content was captured, and that his office followed all legal requirements.
Hours after Kash told Reuters his side of the story, insiders on team blue ran to the NY Times to let them know that Patel has sacked ‘about 10 FBI employees, some veteran agents’ as part of a “rolling revenge” tour on members of Smith’s team.
The boys jumped into action:
The firings are part of a rolling barrage of retribution aimed at those who worked on the two federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump after his first term in office. They came hours after Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, told Reuters that as part of the documents inquiry, the bureau had subpoenaed phone metadata for himself and Susie Wiles, currently the White House chief of staff. -NYT
To summarize:
Team Trump: The Biden FBI surveilled Kash and Susie, then tried to hide it.
Team NYT leakers: That was perfectly normal, Kash is drunk on power and getting revenge.
And of course, the NYT assures us:
Requests for phone records are common in complex criminal investigations to establish timelines and provide proof of communication. It remains unclear if the F.B.I.’s Trump-appointed leaders have accused employees of wrongdoing. In the past, they have not. In some cases, firings have violated procedural safeguards created to protect agents from politically motivated dismissal, according to agents and their lawyers.
But, wait a sec – the Reuters story had the ‘prohibited’ category aspect front and center…
And yet, NYT:
Which is odd, because the ‘prohibited’ designation made them deliberately difficult to locate and effectively shielded them from oversight. He says he discovered the records only after taking over as FBI director and has since eliminated the bureau’s ability to classify files that way.
The seizure of the phone records was essentially covered up, which is not something you tend to do if it was all above board.
“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,” Patel said.
Smith’s spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday about Patel’s specific allegations. Neither Joe Biden, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, nor former FBI Director Christopher Wray offered any comment for the story.
Nevertheless, the timeline raises its own questions.
Patel was called before a grand jury in 2022 after receiving limited immunity, during which he told prosecutors that Trump had declassified the documents taken to Mar-a-Lago. Wiles, for her part, became a close Trump adviser after his 2021 departure from office and eventually co-managed his 2024 presidential campaign. The record collection stretched into that campaign period.
Reuters could not independently establish what records the FBI obtained or who approved the subpoenas. The news agency also couldn’t ascertain if Patel or Wiles themselves were under investigation and, if so, why. Both were close to Trump during this period, as he built toward and ultimately launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency in 2024.
Both Patel and Wiles were known to have been interviewed by investigators as part of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents following his first term.
In 2023, the FBI recorded a phone call between Wiles and her attorney, according to two FBI officials. Wiles’ attorney was aware that the call was being recorded, and consented to it, but Susie Wiles was not.
Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022 to lead two federal probes: one into Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and another into alleged efforts to “overturn” the 2020 election. He charged Trump with felonies in 2023 on both fronts. A federal judge dismissed the case involving the documents. Smith dropped the election interference appeal after Trump won the November 2024 election.
This latest bombshell comes in the wake of another stunning disclosure: internal FBI emails from around the time of the August 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, which appear to directly contradict the Biden administration’s insistence that then-President Joe Biden had no prior knowledge of the search of President Donald Trump’s home. The records also revealed just how hard the Justice Department leaned into the push for a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate—despite concerns within the FBI about whether the evidence actually justified such an aggressive move.
Patel says he doesn’t know why investigators wanted his and Wiles’ records. That’s notable for someone who now sits atop the FBI. The bureau collected phone metadata on two of Trump’s closest allies — one of whom would go on to run his presidential campaign — and filed it away where it couldn’t easily be found.
Fox News reports that at least 10 FBI employees were fired on Wednesday in connection with this latest disclosure.
Read the full article here
