The NFL is upping the stakes in its probe of the New England Patriots and unleashing one of the country’s top lawyers and a high-powered investigative firm to uncover the truth behind a scandal that has cast a dark cloud over the team as they prepare for the Super Bowl.
League officials broke their silence on the Deflategate scandal yesterday, announcing that high-powered white-collar crime lawyer Ted Wells will join NFL Executive Vice President Jeff Pash on the investigation into whether the Pats knowingly used under-inflated footballs in the American Football Conference championship game.
“He is one of the premier lawyers in the United States, he has great credibility, he’s well-known in the field and his reputation is stellar,” said Larry Krantz of the New York law firm Krantz & Berman when asked about Wells. “He’s a very serious lawyer, his integrity is beyond reproach and this is certainly an indication that (the NFL) is taking the investigation very seriously.”
The high-powered investigative firm Renaissance Associates also will be reviewing “electronic and video information” that could reveal whether team personnel let the air out of the balls after they were inspected by the referees, the NFL said.
Wells, who the league tapped to lead an investigation into bullying in the Miami Dolphins locker room in 2013, was named one of “The Decade’s Most Influential Lawyers” in 2010 by the National Law Journal. He famously — and successfully — defended former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer against federal charges he hid payments to a prostitution ring.
Clayton Haluman, a Minneapolis attorney who went head-to-head with Wells during settlement negotiations on behalf of former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, was quick to paint the Harvard Law School graduate as one of the nation’s best investigators.
“They want to bring a top dog in, and there’s no doubt he’s a top attorney. He leaves no stone unturned, and he’s a particularly good strategist,” Haluman told the Herald. “He will do a very thorough investigation, and he will get to the bottom of this. That’s what they want, and that’s what they’ll get.”
According to the league, nearly 40 interviews have been conducted over the last three days, “including of Patriots personnel, game officials, and third parties with relevant information and expertise” — and more interviews are coming.
So far, the league’s evidence supports the conclusion that the Patriots’ footballs were under-inflated in the first half, but they were properly inflated in the second half. The league confirmed the properly inflated footballs remained that way through the end of the game, according to the NFL’s statement.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft responded to the league’s announcement with his own statement stressing that the team has been cooperating fully with the league’s investigation.
“We provided access to every full- and part-time employee the league’s representatives requested to speak with and produced every communication device that they requested to search,” Kraft said. “It is an ongoing process that the league and our team are taking very seriously.”
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