Mueller Russia hoax prosecution team destroyed evidence of their cell phone text messages and calls
The excuses being used for destruction of evidence by the Mueller team are about as plausible as a mob accountant purportedly committing suicide by shooting himself in the head three times. The posse of Trump-hating prosecutors who sought and failed to find evidence of "collusion" between Russia and his campaign managed to completely wipe out their text messages — the kind of evidence that revealed the bias and illicit sexual relationship of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok — as well as call records on their government-issued cell phones. We only learned of this yesterday, two years after these public records were demanded by Judicial Watch and a year after a lawsuit was filed. At least 15 cell phones, and possibly as many as 30, were completely wiped clean of all records.
This stinks. Even worse, as with Hilary Clinton using BleachBit to destroy her private server hard drive that was used for official State Department communications and then smirking about wiping it "with a cloth," they are likely to get away with it.
Robert Mueller testifying.
Photo credit: Medill licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (cropped).
Sean Davis of The Federalist broke the story yesterday:
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
In follow-up tweets, he expressed skepticism over the excuses used to maintain that the destruction of evidence was accidental:
Ivan Petchoukov of The Epoch Times (paywall) explains the context:
The Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Inspector General (IG) had in 2018 detailed an extensive effort to recover the text messages from the special counsel phones used by FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page. The phones had both been wiped before the IG investigators found them.
The documents released on Sept. 10 show that the problem of vanishing data spanned far beyond Strzok and Page. The special counsel's office had a procedure in place to identify and locate electronic records before each member exited the team. As part of the exit procedure, a designated official was assigned to review each phone to preserve records such as emails, text messages, notes, and calendar items.
In at least 30 cases, the phones were wiped before a review of the contents could be completed.
The newly released documents contain a spreadsheet detailing the review of records for more than 130 phones used by the members of the special counsel's office. According to the spreadsheet, seven of the phones were wiped by accident and 11 others were wiped because employees forgot their passwords. The rest were wiped with no reason listed and for other reasons.
In two tweets, he cut to the chase:
NEWS: At least 27 phones used by the Mueller team were wiped before they could be checked for records.
— Ivan Pentchoukov (@IvanPentchoukov) September 10, 2020
Some phones just wiped themselves, in other cases there was mass password amnesia that required resets.
Source ppg. 49-52: https://t.co/DUjvvVd8Ke
Andrew Weismann wiped two of his three Special Counsel's Office phones.
— Ivan Pentchoukov (@IvanPentchoukov) September 10, 2020
He wiped one by accident.
He wiped the other by entering the wrong password too many times.
Has anyone ever wiped their phone by accident? Asking for a friend. pic.twitter.com/MFsb4kInbB
We are in banana republic territory here, with rogue prosecutors destroying evidence and succeeding in covering up for two years, and then most likely escaping any accountability. There is no judicial proceeding involved as far as I know, so obstruction of justice charges can't be brought. Besides, getting a conviction before a D.C. jury would be impossible. Destroying records sought by an inspector general probably is against regulations, but proving the destruction was not accidental as claimed would be extremely difficult, even as implausible as the "mass amnesia" seems.
If Biden wins the election, I fully expect federal prosecutors to be unleashed against political opponents of the left, and they will learn from the conduct of the Mueller team that they will face no accountability for any and all abuses they care to indulge in.
We are a banana republic without the banana trees.