The lawyer who represented White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in 2023 is calling the FBI's version of events a fabrication. Two FBI officials claimed the attorney knowingly consented to the bureau recording a phone call with his client while Wiles herself was kept in the dark. The attorney, whose name has not been publicly released, says that never happened.
Axios reported the attorney's denial, quoting him directly.
If I ever pulled a stunt like that I wouldn't – and shouldn't – have a license to practice law.
He added, as quoted by Axios: "I'm as shocked as Susie."
Axios reporter Marc Caputo wrote that the lawyer "categorically denies he allowed his client to be recorded by the FBI." Caputo also wrote on X that Wiles "believes him & that the Biden-era FBI may have lied about it."
Reuters first disclosed on Wednesday that the FBI, under the Biden administration, subpoenaed the phone records of both Wiles and now-FBI Director Kash Patel in 2022 and 2023. Both were private citizens at the time. The subpoenas were issued as part of special counsel Jack Smith's probes into claims that President Donald Trump worked to overturn the 2020 election and into Trump's handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The revelation that federal investigators went after the personal communications of people who would later hold two of the most sensitive positions in the current administration raises direct questions about the scope and intent of the Smith operation.
Fox News Digital reported that at least 10 FBI employees were fired on Wednesday in connection with the matter. The names and roles of those employees have not been publicly disclosed.
FBI Director Kash Patel issued a statement Wednesday, obtained by Fox News Digital, excoriating the previous FBI leadership.
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's language is notable for its specificity. He did not merely object to the subpoenas. He accused the prior leadership of deliberately concealing the process inside case files that were, in his characterization, "prohibited" and "designed to evade all oversight."
Wiles, for her part, told associates Thursday that she was blindsided. Axios reported her saying simply: "I am in shock."
Trump 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita posted to X in support of the unidentified attorney.
I know the long time lawyer ….and I believe him - This is a violation of basic constitutional rights every American by right - has. We need accountability and we need action.
OutKick founder Clay Travis framed the matter in blunter terms on X, writing: "So the lawyer Biden's FBI eavesdropped on during a call with Susie Wiles said he had no idea it happened." Travis called it "a huge story," adding: "Biden's FBI spied on Trump's campaign manager in the 2024 campaign."
The core factual dispute remains unresolved: two unnamed FBI officials claim the attorney consented to the 2023 recording; the attorney categorically denies it. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the specifics of the recorded call, including when exactly it occurred, what it concerned, or the legal basis for the recording. The attorney's identity has not been publicly released. The identities of the two FBI officials making the consent claim have not been disclosed either.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Wiles, and the FBI for comment. None had responded as of Friday morning.
Investigators will need to establish whether the FBI obtained lawful authorization for the recording, whether any consent was in fact given, and whether the bureau's account can be corroborated by documentation or only by the word of officials who have not put their names to the claim. If the attorney is telling the truth, what happened was not an aggressive investigation. It was the federal government secretly recording a privileged attorney-client communication of a private citizen who now runs the White House. That is not a procedural footnote. That is the kind of conduct that erodes every American's expectation that a conversation with their own lawyer is protected by law.
