Penny Mordaunt Claims Boris Johnson’s Covid WhatsApp Messages Were Lost

Government minister Penny Mordaunt has raised concerns about missing WhatsApp messages during the government’s Covid inquiry. Mordaunt stated that two years of WhatsApp chats with Prime Minister Boris Johnson had disappeared. This comes after Johnson himself admitted to losing around 5,000 messages. However, Johnson’s spokesperson has stated that he has provided all relevant messages to the inquiry and has complied with their requests. Several other politicians, including Rishi Sunak and former Stormont ministers, have also reported missing WhatsApp messages sent during the pandemic. Mordaunt revealed that she had requested a meeting with Johnson’s chief of staff regarding the missing messages but received no response. She was later informed that she would have to pay a significant amount to have her phone forensically examined as it belonged to her and not the government. Mordaunt also discovered a similar issue with WhatsApp messages exchanged with Michael Gove. The article goes on to explain how WhatsApp messages are stored and the limitations on deleting them. It also addresses Johnson’s claims about resetting his phone, changing his number, and a WhatsApp server outage, stating that these factors would not affect the data stored on Mordaunt’s phone. Finally, it clarifies that WhatsApp messages are not stored on WhatsApp servers and are sent using end-to-end encryption.