Maryland Governor Slams ‘Misleading Piece’ About Allegedly Using App That Deletes Messages After 24 Hours

Larry Hogan slammed The Washington Post on Sunday for what he called a “misleading piece” about the Maryland governor’s alleged use of an application that deletes messages after 24 hours.

The Post’s Steve Thompson reported on Dec. 30 that Hogan “has long used electronic chat rooms that destroy messages in 24 hours to communicate with state employees, records show, allowing his inner circle to keep communications beyond the reach of the public, state archivists and history.”

The app is called Wickr.

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Hogan was confronted by host Dana Bash about the report.

“A Maryland law requires public officials to preserve records and communications,” said Bash. “Can you guarantee that nothing official that should have been archived was in those messages?”

Hogan responded:

Yes. So look, we’re, we take transparency very, very seriously. It’s something we focused on for, you know, the entire seven years that I’ve been governor. It was a pretty misleading piece done by this reporter in The Washington Post.

Look, do we ever have communications, casual conversations or chats with people inside and outside the government about things that are happening in the paper? Yes. Do we not preserve official government documents? Absolutely, we do not do that. We preserve them all the time. We respond to literally hundreds and hundreds of requests for Freedom of Information [Act], put out probably nearly a million pages of documents. We’re going to continue to be as transparent as we possibly can. But yeah, there’s no, this does not impact us at all whatsoever in having a personal conversations in chats about things that are happening.

Watch above, via CNN.

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