Veteran FBI training official says agents acted outside of norms in Jack Smith probe

A former head of tactical training at the FBI Academy said the bureau’s work for special counsel Jack Smith fell outside normal practice in cases involving the highest levels of government, particularly the use of pen registers on a presidential campaign aide and her contacts with defense lawyers. 

"It certainly falls outside of the normal scope because we're talking about a presidential team. This is the highest level of government in the United States, highest level of trust, of course, and levels of sensitivity [...] it doesn't get any more sensitive than that," Rob Chadwick, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, told Just the News. 

Memos released in late September by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, show that agents on Smith's team used a pen register on campaign aide Susie Wiles’s phone from February to May 2023, logging contacts with at least 21 Trump-affiliated lawyers, campaign staff, political advisers and journalists, including John Solomon. Pen registers do not record the contents of a phone call, but they do track who was called, from where, and the length of the conversation.

Questioning the "whole truth"

Chadwick added that while such orders can be lawful, the central issue is whether agents and prosecutors told the issuing judge the full truth about the extreme sensitivity of the targets—including lawmakers and attorneys—and whether anything material was withheld. 

"The question is, what information was given to the judge who issued that warrant to launch this pen register, and that's the key. What was told, and what may have been withheld? That's the real question. How forthright were the affiants when they applied for that pin register on these most sensitive of individuals?"

Another criticism of the wayward tactics and operating procedures used by the FBI, Chadwick said, was the absence of any written notes or Form 302 summary from an FBI interview of former CIA Director John Brennan. He referred to that aberration as “curious,” given the bureau’s long-standing practice of documenting interviews in writing, as explained in the U.S. Attorney's Justice Manual.

The FBI’s typed summary of the November 3, 2023, meeting at CIA headquarters says the agents’ original notes would be kept in an attached file, and that the session was held to discuss expert testimony on national defense information, with no documents shown. 

Those attached notes, however, are blank except for the date, location, Brennan’s name and the government attendees, according to the memos released by the White House.

The probe's origins story

Special counsel Jack Smith’s classified-documents investigation of Trump, approved in 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland and later code-named Plasmic Echo, drew internal FBI objections that agents lacked probable cause for an August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago and preferred less intrusive steps, according to emails released to Congress. 

The Justice Department overrode those concerns and the widely publicized raid proceeded. 

Separately, Smith’s team met Brennan at CIA headquarters in November 2023 about possible expert testimony, yet the FBI agents’ notes of the session were left blank, records show. The disclosures follow earlier findings that Smith’s related Arctic Frost probe collected toll records of Republican lawmakers, and an agent later testified he was not told the numbers belonged to members of Congress. 

Smith told Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley that he never met John Brennan and had not received any consultation or counsel from the former CIA director while serving as special counsel. 

Grassley later said that response was “highly evasive and misleading, at minimum,” because records show Smith’s team met Brennan at CIA headquarters in November 2023 to discuss expert testimony in the classified-documents case.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has renewed calls to examine whether Smith misled Congress, citing his denial of consulting Brennan.

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.