How would you recover them after the phones were smashed with a hammer?
Beyond me! But has the question even been asked? Would there be a record with ATT of the transmissions and receipts even if the content was encrypted? Is the code for Clinton’s Blackberry server still available.
The messages should be on the server. Not sure how long they store them. Warrant needed to get them if they were part of the investigation. FBI should have them. Hackers probably don’t have them.
Messages are stored on the server, not the device only.