UPDATED: About Team Mueller's Phone Problems
TGP has an excellent summary of what's known regarding the mass wiping of Team Mueller phones:
For anyone who hasn't accidentally wiped their phone, here's how you might accidentally do that (paraphrase):
You put your phone in airplane mode, lock it and then nuke the phone by repeatedly entering the wrong password.
The wrong password must be entered 10 times in a row in order to nuke the phone.
As it happens, this accident happened to Andrew Weissmann with two of his three phones.
Does this suggest that Team Mueller lawyers and investigators new they might have something to hide? Yes it does.
UPDATE 1: A fried asked me whether Weissmann and others could be in trouble over this. The short answer, of course, would have been: I don't know. But I don't usually do short answers, so I sent an email. I still don't know, but we'll probably be learning more of the facts of the situation. In the meantime:
It sounds at first blush like some kind of obstruction--obstruction of an investigation. What we need to know is whether OIG asked for the phones in connection with a criminal investigation or simply some sort of internal review. If it was criminal, yes, big deal. If not, the penalties are disciplinary and could lead to being fired. Woops! They've mostly all left or been fired anyway.
Here's a link to a document put out by FTC's OIG --but I assume the situation is similar with DoJ's OIG, and it illustrates the weakness of all OIG investigations. The doc goes on about how important it is to cooperate with OIG. Here's the key passage, though:
Failure to cooperate with an OIG request for information or records is serious misconduct and may lead to disciplinary action up to and including removal. Further, furnishing false information or concealing any type of information from the OIG or obstructing OIG investigations, audits, or other inquiries could constitute a violation of law and result in disciplinary action or criminal prosecution.
So, we need to know more.
Shipwreckedcrew says he's working on this, so maybe he'll be able to find out what was involved in the specific circumstances. My belief, however, is that this was not in connection with a criminal investigation.
However ...
If Durham should come up with some sort of indictment in which the operations of the SCO is an issue--say, in connection with the Flynn case, etc.--then the wiping could come in. Perhaps not as direct evidence, that would depend on a lot of evidentiary rules specific to the case, but almost certainly for impeachment purposes if the defendants took the stand.
UPDATE 2: Sidney Powell on fire: