Armed FBI agents stormed Mar-a-Lago while their own colleagues were writing memos saying they had no legal basis to be there.
That raid was one piece of a nine-year surveillance dragnet – and Kash Patel just found the files they tried to hide from him.
Those files are the foundation of a criminal case that's already being built.
How the FBI Ran a Nine-Year Surveillance Operation Against Trump
From the summer of 2016 through Trump's inauguration day in January 2025, the FBI ran four consecutive code-named counterintelligence operations against the man who would become president twice: Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, Plasmic Echo, and Arctic Frost.
Most Americans know Crossfire Hurricane – the Russia collusion hoax predicated on a fake dossier funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The other three have been buried until now.
Patel has reviewed all four – and what his team is finding in the hidden files makes Crossfire Hurricane look like the opening act.
The files were buried deliberately.
Marked "prohibited access" inside the FBI's case management system, they were shielded from view even from most bureau agents.
Only a handful of senior officials under former Director Chris Wray knew they existed – kept in classified storage facilities called SCIFs.
Patel's team has been hunting them down one by one.
FBI Agents Warned the Mar-a-Lago Raid Lacked Probable Cause and Were Overruled
Plasmic Echo is the code name for the classified documents investigation that ended with armed FBI agents storming Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022.
Patel has uncovered a bombshell from inside that probe: the agents working the case didn't think they had probable cause for the raid.
One agent wrote to the team: "We continue to pass versions back and forth after our pause and concern about [probable cause] for any of the locations outlined… What is the guidance for continuing to work on this document without any new information?"
The Biden DOJ overruled them and sent in the raid team anyway.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland personally approved the warrant.
And Patel has confirmed that Wray's FBI secretly obtained phone records for both Patel himself and Susie Wiles – Trump's future White House chief of staff – after Trump announced his 2024 presidential run.
The bureau reportedly recorded a call involving Wiles on the pretense that her defense lawyer had consented.
Her lawyer denies it flatly.
"If I ever pulled a stunt like that, I wouldn't – and shouldn't – have a license to practice law," he told Axios. "I'm as shocked as Susie."
How the FBI Labeled Hunter Biden Evidence as Russian Disinformation to Kill the Investigation
Round River is the most dangerous operation of all – and it remains largely classified.
It started in the FBI's Pittsburgh field office, targeting Rudy Giuliani for investigating Hunter Biden's Ukraine dealings.
From there it expanded to target reporters, lawyers, members of Congress, and documentary filmmakers – anyone who publicly questioned the Biden family's foreign corruption.
The working theory inside the FBI: these people were spreading "Russian disinformation."
In other words, if you repeated claims about Biden family corruption – claims that turned out to be true – the FBI assessed you as a potential national security threat aligned with Moscow.
People were targeted in Round River for their speech – specifically for repeating claims about Biden family corruption that turned out to be true.
Grassley saw it coming years ago.
In 2022, the Senate Judiciary chairman wrote that real, documentable evidence against Hunter Biden was being "falsely labeled as disinformation" inside the bureau.
He and Sen. Ron Johnson went further – telling Patel that back in August 2020, FBI counterintelligence agents showed up to brief them with one actual purpose: killing the senators' own Biden family investigation before it gained traction.
The FBI wasn't chasing foreign spies.
It was running interference for a sitting vice president's son.
Indictments Could Come Within Weeks
This isn't just a declassification project.
It's a criminal case.
A grand jury in Miami, led by U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, is actively building a conspiracy case spanning 2016, 2020, and 2024.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon confirmed that criminal charges are on the table for officials who intentionally weaponized federal power against Trump and his supporters.
"The Civil Rights Division and the DOJ generally does have the tool of a criminal conspiracy statute for conspiracy against rights," Dhillon told Just the News. "This dates back to the start of the Ku Klux Klan."
Those aren't abstract words.
They are the same statutes used to prosecute Klan members who conspired with local law enforcement to deprive black Americans of their constitutional rights.
Dhillon is pointing the same legal cannon at FBI and DOJ officials who conspired with the Biden White House to destroy a political opponent.
Sources told Just the News that the first decisions on whether indictments are warranted could come within weeks.
At least 1,200 people classified as special circumstances targets or subjects – lawyers, journalists, members of Congress, political figures with constitutional protections – were subjected to FBI assessments between 2018 and 2024 under Wray's watch, according to a government audit report delivered to Congress.
The people who ran that machine are now facing the consequences they spent nine years trying to impose on everyone else.
Sources:
- John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy, "Trump targeted by four FBI code-named counterintel probes that ensnared hundreds of Americans," Just the News, March 9, 2026.
- "Grassley Opening Statement on Kash Patel's Nomination to be FBI Director," Senate Judiciary Committee, 2025.
- "Grassley Questions Patel at FBI Oversight Hearing," Senate Judiciary Committee, 2025.
- "Top DOJ lawyer warns feds could face criminal civil rights charges for weaponization," Just the News, August 10, 2025.
