Tom Brady Had His Assistant Destroy His Cellphone After Deflategate

Tom Brady told his assistant to destroy a cellphone he had used during the Deflategate scandal around the time investigators interviewed him about his involvement, the NFL found.

The details emerged in an NFL decision released Tuesday, in which NFL commissioner Roger Goodell upheld Brady’s four-game suspension for his role in the Patriots’ use of underinflated footballs during the AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in January.

The report revealed that “on or before March 6 — the very day that he was interviewed by [independent investigator Ted Wells] and his investigative team — Mr. Brady instructed his assistant to destroy the cellphone that he had been using since early November 2014.”

Brady had refused to turn the phone and his emails over during the Deflategate probe, investigators said.

The NFL report found Brady had sent and received more than 10,000 text messages on the phone from November 2014 to March 2015.

Brady said at a recent hearing that he always destroys, or tells his assistant to destroy, his old phones when he gets a new one, according to the report.