A judge issued warrants for the cellphone seizures Monday, said Mariana Cobián Rodríguez, a spokeswoman for the Puerto Rico Department of Justice. She declined to name those who had been ordered to surrender their phones.
Rosselló was the administrator of the monthslong group chat, which was conducted on the Telegram messaging app and included some of his closest advisers, Cabinet officials and lobbyists. The dozen men, including Puerto Rico’s secretary of state and chief financial officer, used the group to discuss government business, criticize their political foes and make jokes about their friends. The nearly 900 pages of messages, published by the Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico, also included a joke about shooting Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of the territory’s capital, San Juan.
The Puerto Rico Bar Association issued a report last week suggesting seven potential crimes revealed in the chat, including the threats against Cruz as well as possible instances of diversion of funds, conspiracy, disclosure of private information and intention to terminate employment based on political beliefs.
The association also questioned the legality of discussing government business with people in the chat who were not government employees.
The local news media reported that some of the participants in the chat had already turned over their devices willingly. But Mayra López Mulero, a lawyer for the former treasury secretary, Raúl Maldonado, said last week that Maldonado would not turn over his phone without a warrant. “They’re not going to find anything,” López said. “Nothing is going to happen.”
The disclosure of the messages caused an explosion of civic rebellion. An island of 3.2 million people, already impatient over years of economic, corruption and infrastructure problems, took to the streets in protest.
On Monday, hundreds of thousands of people shut down a main highway and paralyzed San Juan. Small protests continued throughout the day Tuesday.
Rosselló released a statement Tuesday reaffirming his intention to remain as the island’s governor.
“Yesterday, as in the past few days, I have remained attentive and silent to the statements made as part of the citizens’ right to free expression,” he said. “When one party speaks legitimately, the other is responsible for listening carefully. The people are talking, and I have to listen.”
He added that any further statements he makes “will be directed to the actions that we carry out as part of the government’s work, as promised and expected by the people.”
But with support eroding on all sides, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Rosselló to govern. On Tuesday, the governor’s chief of staff, Ricardo Llerandi, who was among the people who participated in the chat, resigned. He also stepped down as the chief administrator of the governor’s mansion and as the executive director of the government commerce and exports office.
Llerandi, the local press reported, surrendered his cellphone last week without waiting for a judicial order.
“The past few days have been difficult for everyone,” he said in a resignation letter that was released by the government. “As an individual, I can tolerate the threats I have received, but I can never allow them to affect my home.”
Earlier in the day the interim director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington also resigned, saying that the recent events associated with Rossello’s administration “directly contradict my personal values and ethics.” Also Tuesday, another high-profile member of the governor’s party, a wealthy owner of a shopping center, called for the governor to give up his post.
Melissa Mark-Viverito, a former speaker of the New York City Council whom the governor had referred to in the Telegram chat as a whore, said the seizure of the phones is important.
“The search of the phones, assuming data was not breached or erased, will prove what many of us already understand from having read the 800+ pages,” she said in a text message, “that there was extensive crimes committed.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.