I worked in law enforcement relations for one of the big cell companies. The texts are stored on the company servers. If the DOJ destroyed anything, what they destroyed was copies of the texts acquired via a subpoena. The carrier certainly didn’t destroy them.
i.e. they still exist.
“The carrier certainly didn’t destroy them. i.e. they still exist”
Hard to believe the DOJ /FBI would not have taken care of this lose end.