UNITED STATES—Judicial Watch announced it gained records by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday, September 11. The records show that 27 cell phones on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team at that time were “accidentally wiped” during the Trump probe.
The 87 pages of records show senior members of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) “accidentally” wiped phones multiple times.
A conservative educational foundation Judicial Watch reported that “in a table that appears to be a tabulation of Special Counsel’s Office reviews of phones used by Robert Mueller’s team for records-preservation purposes,” all data in 27 phones was wiped before the review was conducted. The report reads:
20 phones were “accidentally” wiped of data after being entered with wrong password multiple times. 2 phones of Andrew Weissmann, Kyle Freeny and Rush Atkinson, were wiped because they forgot passwords after setting it airplane mode. 1 phone was wiped clean without any explained reasons. There are no records that show Robert Mueller’s phone was reviewed.
FBI lawyer Lisa Page’s phone was reported as restored to factory settings when the inspector general’s office received it, and Strzok’s phone’s review reads that “No substantive texts, notes or reminders.”
Newly released DOJ records show that multiple top members of Mueller's investigative team claimed to have "accidentally wiped" at least 15 (!) phones used during the anti-Trump investigation after the DOJ OIG asked for the devies to be handed over. https://t.co/VVUnfZVolm pic.twitter.com/p50PnoCBse
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 10, 2020
“The pandemic of ‘wiped’ phones among the Mueller team requires a criminal investigation of this destruction of evidence and potential obstruction of justice and other crimes,” Judicial Watch reported its President Tom Fitton’s comment, “The DOJ and FBI hid these records for nearly two years – which only adds to appearance of a cover-up.”
The Trump-Russia investigation ended on July 24 in 2019, when Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill. Two years of investigation by Special Counsel could not verify Russia-Trump campaign relationship in the 2016 election, but found that the Russian government “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion,” said Fox News.
According to Fox News, Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s final report concluded that “investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding the probe’s launch and efforts to seek a controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the early months of the investigation.” It points out “significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised,” regarding FBI’s investigation.
