John Solomon is preying on his credulous dupes again, posting documents — pen register reports targeting Susie Wiles — from the investigation into a criminal who attacked the seat of government and stole boxes of classified documents. Solomon is falsely claiming those documents are at all unusual. And sure enough, the same people clapclapclapping about the Jim Comey investigations (including Solomon himself) are wailing about techniques far less intrusive than Todd Blanche has used, repeatedly, with Comey.
In reality, yesterday’s documents show:
The backstory to the pen register and the rationale for it dates to August 2022, several months before Trump declared his candidacy. According to the indictment, Susie Wiles vetted witnesses to Trump’s document theft to find out if they were “loyal” before paying legal fees out of the PAC money she controlled.
91. Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP’s office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, ” someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.
As it became clear that Trump was closely monitoring — and possibly even coaching — witness testimony in his stolen documents case by dangling free legal representation, Jack Smith got a pen register on Wiles (who was in charge of dispensing the cash) to track the panics that resulted after certain events occurred.
These are actually very revealing documents, which I will unpack in more detail later. They include:
February 22-24, 2023 PRTT: This PRTT report came on the same day as Chamberlain Harris deleted her LinkedIn account that showed that, immediately before her first internship in the White House, she did a trip to St. Petersburg. In the days before, the story broke of how Molly Michaels had ordered Harris to copy an entire box of White House calendars, including classified information, which she loaded to the cloud. Trump recently gave Harris an unlawful $45,000 gift.
This PRTT shows texts with an undisclosed number texting Wiles repeatedly. It also seems to track phone traffic surrounding an interview, possibly Wiles’ own, with Jack Smith’s team. It’s unclear what Wiles told prosecutors about her role paying for legal representation, but the superseding indictment would also confirm that Trump showed Susie Wiles a classified document in August or September 2021. Wiles would have been a witness that Trump not just stole classified information, but unlawfully disseminated it too — precisely the kind of recipient of classified information (including journalists) that Trump has routinely targeted this term.
March 10, 2023 PRTT: This report shows how Wiles would call one or another lawyer (I need to reconfirm these IDs but I believe they remain very significant in Trump’s world) then Trump, then the lawyers again.
March 24, 2023 PRTT: These come from around the time of the first interview of Yuscil Taveras, the computer guy who would (after he obtained his own lawyer) explain how Walt Nauta tried to get him to delete surveillance footage. Whether current Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward ethically represented Taveras in his first interview became a heated issue in October 2023. The treatment of Taveras went right to the heart of the cover-up, which was partially charged in the superseding indictment.
April 26, 2023 PRTT: This report was specifically focused on whom Wiles spoke with surrounding an April 7 interview (but not, apparently, grand jury appearance) she had with Jack Smith’s team. It shows:
May 25, 2023 PRTT: This report appears to have tracked Susie Wiles’ calls immediately after Jack Smith gave notice he was going to charge Trump. It describes:
On 19 May, 2023, the Special Counsel’s Office informed the FBI Washington Field Office of correspondence with retained counsel for Former President Donald Trump that same day. WFO [redacted] and [redacted] reviewed PR/TT data for facility [redacted] associated with Susan Wiles to document WILES’s telephonic communication with FPOTUS Donald Trump’s attorneys and members of the 45 Office on and around 19 May 2023.
Multiple outlets reported that week that the investigation was done and started reporting on Trump’s attempt to preempt it.
The calls were really interesting. For example, Wiles was on a virtual call for 45 minutes while key lawyers and Trump himself tried to call her. And Wiles herself called one of Trump’s Presidential Records Act lawyers — so someone like Pat Philbin or Pat Cipollone, someone who represented another of Trump’s lawyers who met with the FBI right at the beginning of this investigation, not long after that call. Another lawyer for a witness called her days later. And while on the day of the communication, Wiles wasn’t returning the calls she got from the press (and also John Solomon) she did in the days after. As noted above, by the end of the week the press knew Trump was about to be be charged, and stories started preempting the most damaging part of Trump’s crimes.
Donald Trump’s cover-up of stealing hundreds of classified documents included over a dozen lawyers.
But it also included the head of his PAC, Wiles. She played a role in the cover-up before Trump declared his candidacy. And in that role, she not only played a key role in the cover-up. But she was a communication pivot between lawyers and, apparently, a key source for press stories.
As someone involved in — potentially even implicated in — the cover-up of a grave national security crime, it is thoroughly unsurprising DOJ obtained a pen register to see who was calling whom.
More importantly, it is far less intrusive than techniques Todd Blanche himself has used, including serial unlawful intrusions on Jim Comey’s attorney-client protected communications (without the kind of judicial process Jack Smith would use to get Evan Corcoran’s testimony).
These documents reveal a great deal of corruption. The corruption is all that of Trump and his aides.
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