Phones Wiped Clean

The DOJ’s records have revealed that at least a dozen phones from the Robert Mueller investigative team were wiped clean “accidentally,” a move The Cyber Guy Kurt Knutsson told “Fox & Friends Weekend” is easy to manually do on your own.

“All of us have that power,” he said. “Whether you have an Android, an iPhone, any tablet, or a Windows PC or a Mac.”

The documents reportedly showed that lawyer James Quarles' phone "wiped itself" clean without any interference. Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman claimed his phone was "accidentally wiped" after entering the wrong passcode too many times.

According to a 2018 report from the Department of Justice, large gaps of missing information were blamed on the flawed systems of the FBI. Knutsson explained their platforms lacked the ability to capture information from older phones like some Samsungs.

Some devices that are issued by an organization or a company, he explained, do not allow users to control their stored data and offer “no way” of deleting it without company authorization.

“This report actually found that there was no malintent,” he said. “Nobody tried to delete a phone, at least there’s no evidence of that. But it does wake up the whole idea about who’s in control of our data and would we allow or want somebody, such as an agent or an investigator, to have the ability to take away data from their own device that’s being used in an official capacity."

WELL... Well... well...

Senate Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson (left) is asking a Justice Department watchdog to probe recently revealed documents that suggest members of special counsel Robert Mueller's team wiped records from their official phones.

Records released by the Justice Department this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request suggest top Mueller aides erased the information from at least 15 phones, citing forgotten passwords, physical damage and missing hardware.

"These reports are troubling and raise concerns about record retention and transparency," Johnson wrote in a letter to DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz. "Therefore, I respectfully request that your office open an investigation into this matter to determine what, why, and how information was wiped, whether any wrongdoing occurred, and who these devices belonged to."

Johnson is asking Horowitz to send answers by Sept. 18, as the senator winds down a related investigation of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation — the probe of the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russians, which morphed into Mueller's probe in mid-2017. He's also asking whether Horowitz may be able to retrieve messages from the phones.

Johnson's request followed a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to the FBI and Justice Department inquiring about the wiped phones and demanding that they produce all records Mueller's team did turn over, as well as unredacted copies of the FOIA documents.

Horowitz has mounted similar probes into the handling of internal messages by FBI agents involved in the Russia probe and mounted a major effort to retrieve messages deleted from some FBI phones. Horowitz detailed his findings and retrieval methods in a 2018 report.

This article was written by Kyle Cheney and published by POLITICO

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained from it is tainted as well.           Wikipedia





HERE'S THE RUB...
Even though Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI, that guilty plea is considered fruit of the poisonous tree because it was obtained illegally.