The Patriot Post® · Smith Was Spying on Wiles and Patel
FBI Director Kash Patel says he and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles were swept up in former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probes of Donald Trump back in 2022 and 2023. Both Patel and Wiles were the unknowing subjects of subpoenas for phone records before they held their current posts and when they were private citizens.
“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. He said it took months for him to uncover it, even as the director of the FBI.
Patel shouldn’t be surprised, given that he was personally subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in one of Smith’s probes.
As for Wiles, she responded, “I am in shock.”
Yesterday, we noted that Patel had fired 10 FBI agents and analysts who were involved in Smith’s probe and the phone records subpoenas. Naturally, the FBI Agents Association called the firings a violation of FBI employees’ due process rights, “destabilizing the workforce.”
Smith was investigating Trump for “interfering” with the 2020 election and for mishandling classified documents that he kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He eventually abandoned his lawfare against Trump, but not without trying to make sure his smear was made public without a trial. That attempt was blocked by a judge, but Smith is clearly a disgrace.
Part of Smith’s investigation likewise included the Arctic Frost debacle, in which he and his hacks obtained phone records of nine Trump-allied Republican senators: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and Ted Cruz of Texas, in addition to GOP Congressman Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania.
“One hundred and ninety-seven subpoenas were issued by Jack Smith and his team,” according to Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. “These subpoenas were issued to 34 individuals and 163 businesses, including financial institutions.”
It now seems that Smith’s massive dragnet included Wiles and Patel.
Reuters broke the story, reporting, “Smith testified last year that records of members’ calls helped investigators verify the timeline of events around the January 6 Capitol riot and that prosecutors ‘followed all legal requirements in getting those records.’ He told a House panel that the records obtained from lawmakers did not include content of conversations.”
That was not true of at least one conversation, albeit not of a lawmaker. Buried two-thirds of the way into the story, Reuters relays the juiciest tidbit: “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.”
With rare exception, that would be a violation of Wiles’s rights, an appalling breach of attorney-client privilege, and a betrayal of trust that ought to cost her unnamed lawyer dearly.
According to her attorney, however, the allegation is not true. “If I ever pulled a stunt like that, I wouldn’t — and shouldn’t — have a license to practice law. I’m as shocked as Susie.”
In that case, the FBI illegally recorded a conversation between a citizen and her lawyer and then lied about it, which seems totally on-brand for the bureau during the last decade or so — especially under Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray. Smith may also have lied to Congress about it, which, last I checked, is a crime.
If Smith viewed Wiles as a witness to Trump’s supposed crimes, why record her without her knowledge? If she were a subject or a target of the investigation, why conceal that from her?
In short, the only reason none of this is surprising is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden so thoroughly weaponized the Justice Department. It’s not shocking at all that such investigations were used as political tools to discredit Donald Trump and everyone around him. Trump is unwise to engage in anything of the sort himself, but it appears that’s the way the game is played now.