The FBI subpoenaed the phone records of Kash Patel and Susie Wiles while both were private citizens, collecting their call data in 2022 and 2023 as part of the sprawling federal investigation into Donald Trump, Patel told Reuters on Wednesday.

Patel, now the FBI director, said investigators used subpoenas to obtain "toll records" of calls made by him and Wiles, now White House Chief of Staff. He said the records were filed in a way that made them difficult to find after he took over the bureau in February 2025, buried in case files categorized as "Prohibited," a designation designed to evade oversight.

Patel did not mince words:

"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 did not know the FBI's purpose in collecting the records, Newsmax reported. He has since ended the bureau's ability to categorize files as "Prohibited."

The people who owe answers aren't talking

Former Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did former FBI Director Chris Wray, who oversaw the bureau during Smith's investigations. Neither did Joe Biden.

Three of the most relevant figures in the chain of command. None of them had anything to say.

Smith, for his part, told Congress last month that he "followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements and took actions based on the facts and the law." Before a House panel, he maintained that he "followed all legal requirements in getting those records." He is now barred by court orders from discussing undisclosed aspects of the investigation.

Reuters could not independently verify many of the details of Patel's claims, including the full extent and timing of the records seizure and the motive behind it. Reuters also could not establish what records the FBI obtained, who approved the subpoenas, or whether Patel or Wiles themselves were under investigation.

The bigger picture: surveillance as statecraft

Consider the timeline. Patel publicly stated in 2022 that Trump had declassified the documents taken to Mar-a-Lago. He was summoned before a grand jury hearing evidence in the case that year, after being given limited immunity. Wiles became a top Trump adviser after he left office in 2021 and eventually served as co-campaign manager for his 2024 run.

Both were close to Trump. Both were private citizens when the FBI collected their phone data. And both now hold two of the most consequential positions in the federal government.

Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022 and charged Trump with felonies related to the documents investigation in 2023. The case was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge. Smith dropped his appeal after Trump won the election to a second term. On Monday, a federal judge permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing Smith's report on the documents investigation.

The investigation is over. The charges are gone. The report is sealed. What remains is the wreckage: the phone records of private citizens vacuumed up by a federal agency that then hid the evidence of its own conduct behind a filing system no one was supposed to access.

A pattern that demands more than shrugs

The left spent four years insisting that the investigations into Trump were routine, apolitical, by-the-book law enforcement. Every subpoena was justified. Every raid was necessary. Every indictment was proof that the system works.

But "the system" doesn't secretly collect the phone records of a future FBI director and a future White House chief of staff, then bury those records in files designed to block oversight, if everything is routine. Routine doesn't need to hide.

Patel has not said when exactly the record collection began or ended. That ambiguity matters because the window of 2022 to 2023 covers the period when Trump's political operation was reconstituting itself for a presidential run. Wiles was at the center of that operation. Patel was a vocal defender of Trump's position on the documents. The FBI was, at a minimum, monitoring the communications of people building a campaign to defeat the administration that controlled the FBI.

That is not a minor procedural footnote. It is the kind of conduct that, in any other context, would provoke bipartisan outrage. Imagine the reaction if the Trump Justice Department had secretly subpoenaed the phone records of Biden's campaign manager and a future Biden cabinet official during an investigation into Biden himself. The word "authoritarian" would have trended for a week.

The silence is the tell

Garland, Wray, and Biden have offered nothing. Smith insists he followed the rules. The records were hidden. The filing designation that concealed them has been abolished.

The American public is left with a simple set of facts:

• The FBI, under Biden-era leadership, subpoenaed the private phone records of two people now serving at the highest levels of the current administration.
• Those records were filed under a classification that made them nearly impossible to find.
• The people who authorized and oversaw this process are either silent or hiding behind procedural assurances.
• The underlying criminal case no longer exists.

What remains is an institution that surveilled its future boss and buried the receipts. Patel found them anyway. The question now is what else is in those files.