Trump: ‘Action must be taken’ against Mueller’s team for ‘wiping’ phones

President Trump declared that “action must be taken” against former special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors after Justice Department records show members of the team “wiped” their phones during the Russia investigation.

“Action must be taken,” the president tweeted Monday, linking to a post by Harmeet K. Dhillon, a lawyer and Republican Party official.

“I’ll say it again: a lawyer in private practice who did this would go to the court hearing the irate federal judge called on 4 hours’ notice, knowing that sanctions, a bar referral, & criminal investigation would follow. But these ‘highly reputed prosecutors’ are above the law?,” she wrote, linking to a New York Post article about the Justice Department report.

The Post story from Friday said that more than 24 cellphones belonging to members of Mueller’s investigators were “wiped” clean of data before the Justice Department’s inspector general could examine them.

Justice Department records found the phones were cleared because of forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device and intentional deletion.

The report said Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman “accidentally wiped” his device after he entered the wrong passcode too many times in March 2018.

Trump also tweeted “DOJ?,” linking to a post from John Cardillo.

“Mueller’s persecution squad were renegades who framed innocents, destroyed lives, and covered their own asses by making up rules as they went along. Every single one of them should be disbarred and prosecuted,” Cardillo wrote on Twitter. “But nothing will happen. Not a thing.”

The president also retweeted his son Donald Trump Jr.

“Imagine what these crooks would have done to the people they were investing in their hoax had they done the same!,” the president’s oldest son tweeted.

Donald Jr. linked to a post from Sean Davis, the co-founder of The Federalist.

“The newly released DOJ records from the OIG investigation of corruption during the Mueller probe shows that a key tactic used by the Mueller team was to put the phones in airplane mode, lock them, and then claim they didn’t have the password,” Davis wrote.

The president also urged Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to “push it hard.”

“DOJ must act. This should include Crooked Hillary’s illegal deletion of her emails. SPEED!,” the president wrote.

Blackburn had written in a tweet that destroying evidence is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

He also remarked “pathetic!” in response to a tweet from Emerald Robinson, a White House correspondent for Newsmax, who compared the FBI’s response to NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s account of a noose found in his garage to news of the phone wiping.

“Bubba Wallace: ‘There’s a noose in my garage!’ FBI: ‘We’ll scramble 15 agents to investigate today!’ Tom Fitton: ‘The Mueller team destroyed 31 work phones to hide their tracks in 2018!’ FBI: ‘Sorry, we’re busy at an Intersectionality training class,'” she wrote, referring to Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which obtained the Justice Department report.

And Trump linked to former FBI agent Peter Strzok’s appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday, in which he said he still “believes” the president “is compromised by the Russians.”

Trump responded to a tweet from Jubal E. Harshaw, who linked to the interview, and said Strzok is “either an idiot, or he’s lying.”

Trump said he’s “BOTH!”