GOP wants answers on missing and wiped Mueller team phones

Two Republican senators are pressing for answers about apparently missing phones belonging to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigative team that the Justice Department cannot locate, per its watchdog. 

Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told Attorney General Merrick Garland they are “asking the Justice Department for more information and records” after learning that the DOJ “could not locate 59 of the 96 phones” used by Mueller’s team and after discovering that the department “failed to review over twenty phones for federal record preservation.” 

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote to Johnson and Grassley in May, noting in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner that the DOJ’s Justice Management Division took possession of 79 of 96 Mueller team phones in a property transfer from the special counsel’s office in June 2019. A DOJ iPhone record review spreadsheet documented that only approximately 74 of the phones were reviewed for records. Horowitz said that records such as notes and text messages were sent to DOJ or FBI email systems for preservation. 

Horowitz detailed the location of some of the phones, including the devices belonging to former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok, which remain secured in a safe at the DOJ, but the inspector general said the DOJ’s JMD currently does not know the whereabouts of 59 of the 96 team phones.

The senators told Garland they are “seeking further clarity on what steps the department has taken to recover the missing phones and the underlying records.” 

Johnson had previously asked Horowitz to open an investigation into revelations that numerous members of Mueller’s team apparently wiped or otherwise deleted data from their government-issued phones and that “these reports are troubling and raise concerns about record retention and transparency.”

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