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Newly released court filings reveal that former special counsel Jack Smith obtained judicial authorization to monitor telephone records associated with President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, without specifically disclosing that the surveillance would capture communications involving Trump’s defense attorneys, journalists and political advisers.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

WASHINGTON — Two federal judges appointed by former President Barack Obama authorized surveillance of telephone activity involving President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Susie Wiles during the Justice Department’s classified documents investigation in 2023, according to newly unsealed court records that raise questions about prosecutors’ disclosure obligations and the collection of communications data involving defense attorneys.

The records, made public Monday, Oct. 12, by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, show that former special counsel Jack Smith’s team submitted separate applications in February and April 2023 seeking authorization to monitor incoming and outgoing calls associated with a telephone number identified by administration officials as belonging to Wiles. At the time, Wiles was involved in Trump’s political operations and served in a leadership capacity at the SAVE America PAC.

U.S. District Judges Beryl Howell and James Boasberg approved the requests, allowing investigators to collect telephone connection information through devices known as pen registers and trap-and-trace systems. Both judges subsequently became involved in prominent legal disputes with the Trump administration, including cases in which they rejected government policies or challenged the conduct of federal officials.

According to newly unsealed records examined by Just the News, the applications did not specifically disclose that investigators would collect records revealing Wiles’s communications with attorneys involved in Trump’s criminal defense. Earlier declassified documents showed that the monitoring captured contacts involving at least 21 defense lawyers, along with journalists, political advisers and campaign personnel.

The newly disclosed filings do not establish that prosecutors intercepted conversations or listened to privileged discussions. Pen registers and trap-and-trace devices collect connection information rather than the content of telephone calls, but legal experts warn that such records can reveal relationships, patterns of communication and potentially sensitive information about legal strategies.

The disclosures have renewed scrutiny of investigative techniques used during Smith’s prosecution of Trump and prompted questions about whether prosecutors adequately informed the courts of the sensitive communications their surveillance could capture.

The documents were released through the White House Government Transparency Task Force, an initiative established during Trump’s second administration to make previously undisclosed federal records available for public examination.

The surveillance began during the early stages of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified government documents following his departure from the White House in January 2021. Trump had already announced his campaign for the 2024 presidential election when prosecutors sought access to the telephone records.

The first application was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in February 2023. Prosecutors cited previously obtained telephone records indicating that the number under investigation had been used to communicate with individuals involved in the classified documents inquiry.

“Historical telephone connection records provided by AT&T revealed that beginning at least as early as May 2022, the Subject Phone Number was used to communicate with subjects and witnesses shortly before and/or after they spoke with the Government in connection with this criminal investigation,” Smith wrote.

The statement indicates that investigators were interested in communications occurring around interviews conducted by federal authorities. The timing of those contacts was presented as evidence supporting the relevance of additional telephone monitoring to the investigation.

Howell approved the request the following day, relying on the government’s certification that the information sought would be relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

“The Court finds that an attorney for the government […] has certified that the information likely to be obtained by such an installation and use is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” Howell wrote in the authorization.

The statutory process for obtaining pen register and trap-and-trace orders generally requires prosecutors to certify that the information sought is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation. Such orders ordinarily do not require the same showing of probable cause necessary for a warrant authorizing interception of telephone conversations.

That distinction is important because the applications permitted investigators to obtain telephone metadata, including information identifying incoming and outgoing connections, rather than the substance of conversations.

Nevertheless, the monitoring could reveal that a particular attorney, witness or political adviser contacted Wiles, along with the timing and duration of the connection.

In April 2023, prosecutors submitted a second application seeking to extend the monitoring. Boasberg authorized that request, allowing the collection of additional telephone connection records.

The documents do not establish why the applications were submitted to federal judges in Washington rather than to the federal court in Florida, where the classified documents prosecution was eventually brought. The location of the applications has become another question surrounding the investigation, although the records alone do not establish that filing in Washington violated applicable law.

The two judges’ subsequent involvement in litigation concerning Trump has also attracted attention.

Howell, who served as chief judge of the federal district court in Washington from 2016 until 2023, presided over significant grand jury proceedings involving Trump-related investigations.

During her tenure as chief judge, she oversaw proceedings connected to investigations by former special counsel Robert Mueller and later inquiries into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In March 2023, Howell ruled that prosecutors could obtain additional testimony from Trump attorney Evan Corcoran in the classified documents investigation, applying the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

The ruling involving Corcoran permitted prosecutors to seek otherwise privileged information after the court determined that the legal requirements for applying the exception had been satisfied.

Howell was also involved in litigation concerning Smith’s efforts to obtain records associated with Trump’s Twitter account. The investigation resulted in a search warrant and a $350,000 penalty against Twitter after the company failed to comply with the court’s deadline.

Her disputes with the Trump administration continued after the president returned to office in 2025.

Howell struck down an executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie, concluding that the administration had violated constitutional protections by penalizing the firm over its previous political and legal activities.

Perkins Coie had represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and was associated with legal work involving opposition research into Trump.

In her ruling, Howell criticized the executive order as an unprecedented presidential action directed against a law firm.

“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue […] and in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’” Howell wrote.

The Justice Department subsequently sought Howell’s recusal, citing statements she had made in earlier cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and Trump-related legal matters. Howell rejected the request.

Boasberg, who approved the April 2023 monitoring extension, has also presided over major disputes involving the president.

In March 2025, he challenged the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.

The confrontation intensified after deportation flights continued despite a judicial directive requiring the administration to halt the removals.

Boasberg ordered federal officials to explain their compliance with his March 15 ruling and subsequently considered whether their conduct warranted criminal contempt proceedings.

During the litigation, he criticized the conduct of government attorneys, describing their courtroom approach as “intemperate and disrespectful,” according to The Guardian’s coverage of the proceedings.

Trump publicly denounced Boasberg as a “radical left lunatic” and called for his impeachment. The judge’s handling of the deportation dispute became a prominent example of the administration’s broader conflicts with federal courts.

An appellate court later restricted Boasberg’s contempt inquiry, with the majority describing the proceedings as an improper “judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a coequal department.”

The dispute over the court’s authority and subsequent appellate intervention fueled additional criticism from Republican lawmakers who argued that the judge had exceeded the proper boundaries of judicial oversight.

Several members of Congress subsequently called for Boasberg’s impeachment or changes to federal judicial procedures.

Boasberg previously served as presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees certain surveillance applications involving foreign intelligence investigations.

During that tenure, he addressed issues arising from the FBI’s handling of surveillance applications connected to the investigation into alleged links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

His decisions involving FBI surveillance procedures and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court drew criticism from Republicans concerned about the bureau’s conduct during the investigation.

Those earlier and subsequent judicial decisions have become part of the political controversy surrounding the newly released surveillance records. However, rulings against Trump or his administration do not independently establish that either judge acted improperly when approving the 2023 telephone monitoring applications.

The central question concerns what prosecutors disclosed when seeking authorization and whether the sensitivity of the expected communications required additional explanation.

The new filings follow the release of previously classified investigative records describing telephone monitoring conducted during the FBI’s investigation, code-named Plasmic Echo.

Those records indicated that agents collected connection information involving Wiles and a network of individuals associated with Trump’s political and legal operations.

According to Just the News, investigators identified communications involving at least 21 Trump-affiliated lawyers, campaign advisers and journalists.

Some of the affected individuals were involved in the former president’s legal defense, raising questions about whether the collection of telephone metadata could have provided prosecutors with information about defense preparations.

Although the contents of attorney-client communications are ordinarily protected by legal privilege, the same protection does not necessarily extend automatically to every piece of information associated with a telephone connection.

Telephone records can nonetheless reveal potentially valuable investigative information, including the identities of people contacted by defense attorneys, when those communications occurred and patterns suggesting preparation for particular legal proceedings.

Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said the implications extend beyond the technical distinction between telephone metadata and intercepted conversations.

“If they were going after lawyers, lawyers who have a Sixth Amendment obligation to defend their clients, and withholding that information from the courts, that can raise serious not only legal issues but ethical issues as well,” Dershowitz told Just the News.

His criticism centered on whether prosecutors adequately informed the judges that their requested monitoring could involve attorneys participating in Trump’s defense.

The disclosed applications do not specifically identify defense lawyers as intended subjects of the monitoring, according to the published examination of the records. That omission has generated debate about whether the government had a responsibility to provide additional information concerning the anticipated collection.

The absence of such language, however, does not by itself establish that prosecutors deliberately concealed the lawyers’ identities or violated a particular legal requirement. A determination of misconduct would require examining the applicable rules, the information known to prosecutors and the complete circumstances surrounding the applications.

Dershowitz argued that access to communications metadata could provide investigators with insight into defense preparations even without revealing what participants said.

“Here we have a clear violation of expectations of privacy. When you make a phone call and you’re a lawyer, you do not expect the fact that you made that phone call to, say, a wiretap expert or a lie detector expert, or a witness. You don’t expect that the government will get access to that, and yet the government has access to who the defense attorneys called,” he said.

He warned that telephone records could reveal potential witnesses or specialists consulted by attorneys before prosecutors would otherwise learn that those individuals might be involved in a case.

“And that would give them a tremendous advantage in any case. It could give them the names of potential witnesses, and you know ultimately that would have to come out, but it wouldn’t have to come out at the time that this investigative tactic was being used,” Dershowitz added. ” So I think there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure that expectations of privacy and civil liberties beyond the Constitution are adhered to.”

The concerns surrounding Wiles’s phone records have developed alongside separate congressional investigations into Smith’s collection of telephone information involving Republican lawmakers.

Previously released records indicated that investigators obtained communications information associated with several members of Congress during inquiries involving Trump and efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

The collection prompted questions about the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which provides members of Congress with protections against certain forms of executive and judicial scrutiny of their legislative activities.

The House Judiciary Committee released testimony from a federal agent assigned to Smith’s investigation who said he did not know that records involving lawmakers were being collected. The agent reportedly acknowledged that additional authorization would have been necessary if he had known the records belonged to members of Congress.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., subsequently filed a lawsuit against Smith, alleging that the collection of her telephone records violated constitutional protections associated with her position as a member of Congress.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, was also among the lawmakers whose telephone records were reportedly obtained.

A September report issued by the House Judiciary Committee accused the Biden-era Justice Department and Smith’s team of disregarding constitutional safeguards during investigations involving Republican lawmakers.

The Republican-led committee concluded that prosecutors “ran roughshod” over separation-of-powers protections while collecting communications records.

That conclusion represents the committee’s assessment of the investigative conduct, rather than a final judicial determination that the surveillance was unlawful.

The newly disclosed Wiles monitoring applications have added another dimension to that oversight effort because they involve communications associated with criminal defense attorneys and political advisers rather than congressional offices alone.

Separate records released by the White House task force also described investigative interest in travel information concerning Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, and his son Barron.

Taken together, the disclosures have prompted questions from Republican lawmakers and legal commentators about the scope of information collected during Smith’s investigations and whether government attorneys observed sufficient safeguards when their inquiries intersected with political activity, legal representation and congressional communications.

Smith has defended his conduct and rejected allegations that political considerations influenced his decisions.

In congressional testimony, the former special counsel maintained that he acted within the law and pursued the evidence as he would have in any comparable criminal investigation.

He has said he believes the decisions made by his team were appropriate and that he would conduct the investigations and prosecutions in the same manner if presented with the same circumstances again.

Smith’s position stands in contrast to criticism from Trump, Republican lawmakers and legal experts who have questioned whether the investigations exceeded appropriate limits.

The dispute is also complicated by differences between obtaining telephone metadata, intercepting communications and monitoring the content of private conversations.

Pen register and trap-and-trace orders are designed to provide investigators with connection information. They do not automatically authorize listening to conversations or reading the substantive contents of communications.

While the new records establish that the government obtained authorization to collect certain telephone information associated with Wiles, they do not establish that prosecutors heard privileged conversations between Trump and his attorneys.

The implications for attorney-client privilege and the Sixth Amendment therefore depend on the nature of the information obtained, how prosecutors used it and whether any additional legal protections applied.

Another unresolved issue concerns the authority of the Washington federal court to approve the applications in connection with an investigation that later produced criminal charges in Florida.

The location of an eventual prosecution does not necessarily determine where every investigative application must be filed. Federal surveillance statutes provide procedures governing judicial authorization, and assessing the propriety of these particular applications would require a closer examination of their jurisdictional basis.

The public records also remain redacted, limiting independent assessment of the government’s complete justification for the monitoring.

The White House task force’s disclosures have nevertheless provided new insight into investigative decisions made during a period when Trump was preparing to challenge Biden in the 2024 presidential election while facing multiple federal criminal inquiries.

The timing has contributed to political scrutiny because investigators were collecting information connected to a senior campaign figure after Trump formally announced his candidacy.

The surveillance was conducted during a criminal investigation, however, and the disclosed applications cite communications with subjects and witnesses as the stated basis for seeking telephone records.

Whether the monitoring crossed legal or ethical boundaries remains a separate question from the political circumstances surrounding the investigation.

The controversy now centers on the extent of the information prosecutors collected, what they told the judges approving the surveillance and whether additional safeguards should have applied to communications involving attorneys, lawmakers and journalists.

For congressional investigators, the unsealed applications offer another opportunity to examine how the Justice Department handled sensitive records during the Trump prosecutions.

For legal experts, the case raises broader questions about the protections afforded to defense communications when investigators rely on telephone metadata rather than direct interception.

The disclosures also leave unresolved whether prosecutors deliberately withheld material information from the courts or whether the applications satisfied the statutory requirements governing this form of surveillance.

Smith has maintained that his investigations were conducted lawfully and without political motivation. Critics continue to argue that the collection of communications records warrants additional scrutiny.

With the February and April 2023 applications now public, the debate has moved beyond the existence of telephone monitoring to the adequacy of the judicial approval process and the safeguards governing sensitive investigative information.

The records establish that federal judges authorized monitoring associated with Wiles and that the resulting collection included connections involving Trump’s legal and political associates. Whether those actions violated constitutional protections, professional obligations or federal law has not been conclusively determined.

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