On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would be appointing Susie Wiles as his Chief of Staff when he assumes office in January. Wiles is already a historic pick for the top White House staff job: she’ll be the first woman ever selected to the position. It’s also significant for residents of northeast Florida due to Wiles’ deep connections to Duval and St. Johns counties, dating back decades. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected,” Trump said. “I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
This will not be the first time Wiles has held a key role within Donald Trump’s political network. She was head of the campaign’s Florida operations in 2016, when they swung the state for the Republican candidate for the first time since 2004. She also helped broker the political alliance between Trump and gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, preceding the latter’s narrow election victory in 2018.
Initial Political Career
The long history of Wiles’ Florida political career began when she moved to Jacksonville with her then-husband, Larry Wiles, in 1985. Prior to this, she’d worked as a staffer for Congressman Jack Kemp of New York, the 1980 presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan, and the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush.
After working for a year as an assistant to the Secretary of Labor in the Reagan administration, Wiles achieved her first major Florida political job as District Director for Congresswoman Tillie K. Fowler, who represented Jacksonville in the House of Representatives from 1993 to 2001. She held that position for three years before going to work in the Jacksonville Mayor’s office.
Starting in 1995, Wiles worked as Chief of Staff to Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney, staying there until 1999. Delaney currently serves as the President of Flagler College in St. Augustine, a higher education destination for many graduating high school students in Flagler and Volusia County. She also advised former Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton from 2004 to 2009, managed Rick Scott’s first gubernatorial campaign, and formed a consulting firm in Ponte Vedra Beach with former Jacksonville Jaguars player Tony Boselli.
Flagler College to the White House
In addition to her history with Flagler College’s current president, Wiles’ own daughter started her political career after attending the St. Augustine school. Caroline Wiles went to Flagler, but did not graduate, and was later hired to Trump’s White House in 2017. She ultimately resigned the post after failing a background check from the FBI necessary to gain high security clearance.
Already Caroline had drawn scrutiny for her appointment to the role of Deputy Assistant to the President and White House Director of Scheduling, a six-figure salaried position, at 30 years old with no college degree. She also worked for former Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
Save America PAC
In the aftermath of the January 6th, 2021 Capital riots, Susie Wiles was among the first of Trump’s top staffers to be assigned into a new leadership for future endeavors: she became the Chief Executive Officer of the Save America PAC, the foremost fundraising machine for Trump’s campaign between his two presidencies. Founded two days after Joe Biden was projected to have defeated Trump in the 2020 election, the Save America PAC has not only functioned to raise money for the 2024 race, but it also spent over $60 million legal fees for Trump and his allies according to Politico.
During her time with Save America, Wiles’ proximity to Trump’s own legal scandals landed her in a position of suspicion as well. She was questioned by federal investigators in connection to the 2023 special counsel probe into alleged classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Though special counsel Jack Smith did not list Wiles’ name, several major media outlets have she is an unnamed ‘representative of [Trump’s] political action committee’ which the report did reference.
Becoming Chief of Staff
Working alongside Trump deputies such as 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien and conservative silicon valley billionaire donor Peter Thiel, Wiles became Trump’s strikingly powerful yet little-known political commander in the long-running plan to get him back into the White House in 2025.
By the time the 2024 Trump campaign was in full force against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, Wiles was among the top leaders working to achieve the historic victory. She will now hold the top appointed job in the White House, a post four men held in Trump’s first administration.
The first Chief, former RNC Chair Reince Priebus, was said by journalist Michael Wolff to have later called his ex-boss an ‘idiot’ after his resignation. The second, Marine General John Kelly, has called him a fascist and a dictator and accused him of insulting fallen soldiers. The third, interim Chief Mick Mulvaney, has remained supportive of Trump and praised Wiles’ selection. Trump’s final Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, has been indicted in both Arizona and Georgia for alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, subpoenaed in the House select committee investigation in the January 6th attack, and ordered to turn over texts and emails in relation to the classified documents investigation.
As she begins her work on spearheading Trump’s transition team ahead of his second inauguration in January, Wiles will have the unique challenge of following a turbulent history of predecessors while assisting one of the most politically galvanizing figures in American history. Such political unrest would drive away many of Washington’s top leadership talents. Still, Wiles is from Florida.
