OOPS, ALL GONE

ICE Barbie Aide’s Bizarre Explanation for Deleting Secret Messages

Joseph Guy’s lawyers say a Signal reinstall “inadvertently” erased nearly 30 group chats involving Kristi Noem.

The top aide revealed by PunchUp to have erased nearly 30 secret Signal chats involving Kristi Noem and her rumored lover Corey Lewandowski claims the deletions were an accident. Joseph Guy, the former Department of Homeland Security deputy chief of staff, wiped the FEMA-related group chats on his last day in the Trump administration, as the Daily Beast’s sister investigations Substack first reported. His lawyers at Binnall Law Group told PunchUp that Guy had reinstalled the Signal app on his phone in March, which “inadvertently caused the loss of some messages.” That was, they stressed, “long before the court ordered his deposition.” But the timeline is murky. The spokesperson could not say on what specific date Guy claimed to have deleted Signal and lost the messages, including whether it happened before or after Noem’s March 5 firing. Then, in April, they said, Guy reinstalled the app again, this time in an unsuccessful bid to recover the very messages the first reinstall had wiped. The account raised more questions than it answered. The spokesperson did not address why Guy was using Signal for work on his personal phone despite a DHS order not to do so. Nor did the story square neatly with the version Guy gave under oath at his May 4 deposition, where his account—set out in a preservation order from Judge Susan Illston—was that the messages vanished on April 30 or May 1, his final days on the federal payroll. Illston said she was “seriously troubled by these allegations of spoliation.” The lawyers insisted: “Mr. Guy never intentionally deleted the messages at issue.” The deletions came as Noem, 54—nicknamed “ICE Barbie” for her love of dolling up for filmed immigration raids—and her chief adviser, Lewandowski, 52, were engulfed in a fast-spreading scandal over how contracts were awarded on their watch. There is no suggestion that Noem and Lewandowski knew about Guy’s deletions. Binnall Law Group, which now employs Guy in its public affairs arm, emphatically denied that Guy discussed deleting messages with Noem, Lewandowski, or anyone linked to them. “Any assertion to the contrary is a lie,” the spokesperson said. Noem and Lewandowski did not respond to requests for comment.

Tom Latchem exposes the secrets, scandals, and stories that powerful people and institutions want to keep under wraps. Follow all of his reporting at PunchUp on Substack.