Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump brings Susie Wiles to the podium at an election night watch party Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A Republican Party operative tapped to become chief of staff in the second Trump administration previously caught the eye of special counsel Jack Smith in the Mar-a-Lago documents probe.
On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that Susan “Susie” Wiles will fill the hugely influential role, one often considered the most powerful unelected position in the executive branch. She will be the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff.
Wiles is a veteran of GOP politics dating back to the late 1970s and originally worked with Trump during his 2016 presidential run — running his operations in Florida. She then went on to help Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis win his election in 2018 but those two parted ways under a cloud of acrimony in 2019. Wiles then headed back to Trump.
In 2023, the soon-to-be-defunct special counsel’s office took an interest in two incidents during Wiles’ tenure as the CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC — to which the 45th president elevated her in March 2021 — but there is no indication, or allegation, the incoming chief of staff did anything illegal or untoward.
Since Wiles took the reins, the political action committee has spent substantial sums of money on legal defense efforts for the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president and several others caught up in various Trump-related dragnets spread throughout four jurisdictions across the country.
Smith, for his part, did not evidence any concern over legal bills. His sights, of course, were set on documents taken from Washington, D.C., to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in southern Florida and, in Wiles’ case, to northern New Jersey.
The Mar-a-Lago indictment was filed on June 8, 2023. The document was unsealed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon the next day.
The special counsel’s office obliquely refers to Wiles as follows:
In August or September 2021, when he was no longer president, TRUMP met in his office at The Bedminster Club with a representative of his political action committee (the “PAC Representative”). During the meeting, TRUMP commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well. TRUMP showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close. The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation.
In late June 2023, citing anonymous sources, ABC News identified Wiles as the “PAC Representative” mentioned in the document.
To date, “Country B” has not been identified.
In July 2023, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment — adding three additional charges and naming a third co-defendant to the case. Originally, Smith’s team only charged Waltine “Walt” Nauta as a co-defendant. In the superseding indictment, Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos de Oliveira was added to the list of the accused.
The second iteration of the indictment adds one reference to Wiles:
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.
None of the references to Wiles, however, suggest prosecutors were much concerned with Wiles — except insofar as what Trump revealed to her, and, perhaps as a potential witness in the event of a trial.
“This is not an allegation that Susie Wiles did anything unlawful; if anything, it signals she told the truth when interviewed,” MSNBC legal commentator Lisa Rubin posted on X (formerly Twitter). “But it does reflect she was shown national security information by a person who no longer had a security clearance and squirreled that info away, and signed up anyway.”
Wiles is the daughter of legendary sportscaster Pat Summerall.
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