A top Republican investigator is demanding answers after at least two dozen phones belonging to members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team were “wiped” of their data before Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigators could review them.
“It appears that Special Counsel Mueller’s team may have deleted federal records that could be key to better understanding their decision-making process as they pursued their investigation and wrote their report,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote to the Justice Department and the FBI on Friday. “Indeed, many officials apparently deleted the records after the DOJ Inspector General began his inquiry into how the Department mishandled Crossfire Hurricane. Moreover, based on this new information, the number of times and the stated reasons for the deletions calls into question whether or not it was a widespread intentional effort.”
The revelation was contained within 87 pages of partially redacted Justice Department records released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.
Many of the names are concealed, but the records show that Andrew Weissmann, a key prosecutor on the Mueller team who has gone on to become an MSNBC legal analyst, said he accidentally wiped the data from his government-issued phones two separate times. Notes from March 3, 2018, noted that he “entered password too many times and wiped his phone,” and notes on Sept. 27, 2018, indicated that he “accidentally wiped cell phone — data lost.”
The DOJ notes from May 30, 2018, state that the phone belonging to Greg Andres, an assistant special counsel, “was wiped due to a forgotten passcode, not clear on the exact date.” Records from Nov. 27, 2018, also said the device belonging to Mueller prosecutor Kyle Freeny “was accidentally wiped prior to records review.” In addition, the documents revealed that Mueller attorney L. Rush Atkinson’s phone “was wiped on 11/29/2018 by accident after input of passcode too many times.”
The records show that on April 24, 2018, DOJ investigators wrote that the phone belonging to James Quarles, an assistant special counsel on the team, “wiped itself without intervention from him,” and he “emailed confirming he did not use text and had no work related or other photos on his device prior to it being wiped.”
Many of the other names are redacted but show many similar instances with the Mueller team member phones: “in airplane mode, no passcode provided, data unable to be recovered, so had to be wiped,” “employee tried to incorrect enter password too many times, and the phone was wiped of all data,” “forgot password to phone and the phone reset itself,” “phone was wiped due to a forgotten passcode to the phone,” “phone was wiped prior to review because phone was in airplane mode and the passcode was not provided — therefore the phone had to be restored to factory settings without review,” “phone was accidentally wiped prior to records review,” “phone was accidentally wiped via password input,” and “had to be wiped due to incorrect password.”
The Justice Department declined the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
The newly released notes on former FBI lawyer Lisa Page show that her phone was misplaced by the FBI and had been “restored to factory settings” when the DOJ watchdog received it. The notes for fired FBI agent Peter Strzok state that “no substantive texts, notes, or reminders” were found on that government-issued phone.
Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team early in his investigation and later fired from the bureau after his texts with Page, with whom he was having an affair, were discovered. In one Aug. 6, 2016, exchange, Page said, “Trump should go f himself.” Strzok responded, “F Trump.” Two days later, Page texted, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok then replied, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
Horowitz’s 2018 report noted that “the FBI did not provide any text messages for the period from December 15, 2016, to May 17, 2017, because of issues with the data collection and preservation software used on the FBI’s Samsung S5 mobile devices,” but the watchdog’s forensic agents eventually “obtained the phones used by Strzok and Page, and recovered a large number of the text messages from this ‘gap’ period,” including 9,311 messages from Strzok’s phone and 10,760 messages from Page’s phone.
Grassley asked the Justice Department and the FBI for the unreacted versions of the new FOIA records, all records including text messages for the Mueller team’s government phones, and all records related to the Mueller team’s explanations for the phone data deletions. He also asked the Justice Department and the FBI about when they became aware of the numerous data wipes, whether the data was recovered, if Mueller’s team is being investigated for violating federal record-keeping laws, and whether this has been referred to Horowitz to look into further.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham suggested to Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night that this was a matter for U.S. Attorney John Durham to look into during his criminal inquiry into the Russia investigation. Graham also compared it to Hillary Clinton’s team deleting thousands of emails from her private server and a Clinton aide breaking apart her old mobile devices.
“If you can’t manage your own phone, why should we trust you to investigate a crime?” the South Carolina Republican said. “So, I guess they just ran out of hammers and bleaching material. So, the question is: Did they obstruct justice? Did they intentionally delete information from their phone because Horowitz was on the case? That’s the question for Durham.”
Durham collected his first guilty plea last month from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, whose anti-Trump texts were also unearthed by Horowitz, pleaded guilty to a false statements charge for altering a CIA email in 2017 that helped justify the continued wiretapping of Page by fraudulently adding that former Trump campaign associate Carter Page was “not a source” for the agency when the CIA had told Clinesmith and the bureau that Page was an “operational contact” for them.
