While he acknowledged that the failure of the reporting process “was simply unacceptable,” Mr. Price sought to put the best possible light on the events of the past nine days.

“By all accounts, the precinct and satellite caucus meetings themselves went well,” he wrote. “In the days following the caucuses, our staff worked under immense pressure to produce a complete report of results from the caucuses and was able to do so in 72 hours. Enduring threats to personal safety, taunts and anger from people around the globe, our staff worked in a professional manner to produce a final result.”

The Democratic National Committee and some Iowa Democratic Party leaders have pointed fingers at Mr. Price for not doing more to ensure that changes to the caucus process this year, such as the use of a new results-reporting app, were fully tested and clear to the precinct leaders and many others involved in running the process.

In a conference call with his central committee two days after the caucuses, Mr. Price was pressed by two members over the appearance of cronyism because of his friendships, dating to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, with a senior adviser to Mr. Buttigieg who is married to the founder of the company that developed the caucus app. (The New York Times was provided with a call-in number for the call.)

“We have seen the pictures of you, Troy, with app developers and people with the Buttigieg campaign, and that’s concerning,” said Holly Brown, a committee member. She told Mr. Price he should not be involved in a planned post-mortem of what went wrong. “We’d like to have you removed from this,” she said.