Two GOP Senators are demanding answers after 59 out of 96 phones assigned to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team appear to have gone missing following their ill-fated investigation into Russian collusion.
Senators Ron Johnson (WI) and Chuck Grassley (IA) fired off a Wednesday letter to the Justice Department after discovering that the DOJ “could not locate 59 of the 96 phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team,” according to a press release on Grassley’s website.
“Further, the Justice Department failed to review over twenty phones for federal record preservation,” the statement continues.
The Wednesday letter follows up on a September 2020 request regarding allegations that cellular phones assigned to “multiple people on then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team were ‘wiped’ for various reasons during [the Russia investigation].”
In a May 11, 2021 response, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) revealed that 59 of the 96 phones assigned to Mueller’s team were unable to be accounted for, despite the DOJ having taken possession of 79 of them in June 2019 to review for official records – including notes and text messages were sent to the DOJ or FBI for preservation, according to Just The News.
Grassley and Johnson now want to know:
- the names of SCO employees whose cell phones were not reviewed for official records
- what, if any, actions are being taken by the DOJ to recover the 59 phones the department has been unable to locate
- whether the DOJ reviewed the phones to ascertain “whether they were used to leak sensitive or classified information.”
This article was originally published by Zero Hedge. Read the original article.
