Three Patriots legal moves whose reasoning I don't understand

[Ken Canin]

Just to be clear, I have no doubt of Brady's innocence in all this.

That said, there are three moves by the Patriots' or Brady's attorneys that still bother me and that I cannot make sense of.

(1) Yee claimed that Brady did not divulge his personal texts because doing so would create a "dangerous precedent" going forward. I don't understand this logic. It just makes no sense. There is no "precedent" being created. If there was, it is irrelevant to a lawyer's job to defend his client, not future clients. And since Goodell can just suspend someone for noncooperation, if there is a precedent being set, it's in the opposite direction.

(2) The explanations for why McNally was not made available for another in-person interview make no sense to me either. The explanations are of the form "it would be inconvenient to McNally", or "it would be unnecessary to Wells", or something. I don't understand the logic here. The Patriots' attorneys' job is to represent the organization, not to minimize inconvenience to McNally. (That is, the Pats lawyers are representing the Patriots corporation, which is distinct from any one employee). McNally's convenience or lack thereof isn't a factor they should (or can) consider. And it's not their role to guess when Wells thinks he has enough information or doesn't. Indeed, by reducing Wells' billables, not making McNally available again just needlessly antagonizes Wells.

(3) The most surprising to me of all these is Brady's decision not to go the White House. How could his lawyers have let him skip that? Brady's explanations, that he had a "prior family commitment" make no sense: why can't he have broken the commitment? The explanation, which sounds fake even if it isn't, just hurt Brady's credibility exactly when he needed it helped.

Also, just to be clear, there are alternative explanations for all these moves. But by putting out implausible or incredible ones ("dangerous precedent", "prior family commitment", "inconvenient") I feel like the credibility takes an unnecessary hit.

 

[RunAmok]

Just to be clear, I have no doubt of Brady's innocence in all this.

That said, there are three moves by the Patriots' or Brady's attorneys that still bother me and that I cannot make sense of.

(1) Yee claimed that Brady did not divulge his personal texts because doing so would create a "dangerous precedent" going forward. I don't understand this logic. It just makes no sense. There is no "precedent" being created. If there was, it is irrelevant to a lawyer's job to defend his client, not future clients. And since Goodell can just suspend someone for noncooperation, if there is a precedent being set, it's in the opposite direction.

(2) The explanations for why McNally was not made available for another in-person interview make no sense to me either. The explanations are of the form "it would be inconvenient to McNally", or "it would be unnecessary to Wells", or something. I don't understand the logic here. The Patriots' attorneys' job is to represent the organization, not to minimize inconvenience to McNally. (That is, the Pats lawyers are representing the Patriots corporation, which is distinct from any one employee). McNally's convenience or lack thereof isn't a factor they should (or can) consider. And it's not their role to guess when Wells thinks he has enough information or doesn't. Indeed, by reducing Wells' billables, not making McNally available again just needlessly antagonizes Wells.

(3) The most surprising to me of all these is Brady's decision not to go the White House. How could his lawyers have let him skip that? Brady's explanations, that he had a "prior family commitment" make no sense: why can't he have broken the commitment? The explanation, which sounds fake even if it isn't, just hurt Brady's credibility exactly when he needed it helped. And skipping a White House invite like that guarantees a bunch of negative press, which is perhaps dubious strategically as Wells supports the President and might construe (as most people did) skipping the invite as political. The Wells angle aside, why court negative publicity with a fake-sounding explanation just at the very time when you should want positive publicity that helps your credibility?

Also, just to be clear, there are alternative explanations for all these moves. But by putting out implausible or incredible ones ("dangerous precedent", "prior family commitment", "inconvenient") I feel like the credibility takes an unnecessary hit.

1) IMO - at this point Yee and Brady realized what a true witch-hunt it had become. There was ZERO evidence of any wrong-doing and yet they continued to look for a body. We don't know how contentious it may have gotten in the Brady/Wells interview. It has been documented that there was no text/phone conversation between Jastremski for at least 6 months prior to the AFC game so unless it was a fishing expedition there was no need for Brady's phone.


2) from another post - They have it in writing that they offered the Deflator up, but only if Wells could supply a reason, which he refused to do. They also offered to present questions to the Deflator and offered a different means than face to face. They offered face to face if Wells could show why he needed to do it, with respect to his initial set of rules that said he would only need to interview anyone more than once if new information was presented. In fact, he was interviewed for 7 hours, and it ended with Wells saying 'we have no more questions' and not only was there no new information, which is proven by the fact that the Pats asked if there was new information and wells gave them none.

3) It's irrelevant to this issue.

 

[hwc]

McNalley had been interviewed four times. The fourth interview was a 7 hour interrogation by Wells and team of three additional lawyers that took place two weeks after all text messages had been given to Wells. The agreement was that the fourth interrogation would be the last.

Wells didn't ask McNalley about the "deflator" text message, even though he had had it for weeks.

Here ya go:

http://wellsreportcontext.com/#mcnallyfive

By the time Mr. Wells was retained by the League, the League had all of Mr. Jastremski’s texts, Mr. McNally had already been interviewed three times, and Mr. Jastremski had been interviewed twice. The first of Mr. McNally’s interviews happened the evening of the AFC Championship, when Mr. McNally volunteered to stay at the stadium for an interview since he would not be back for his game-day responsibilities until August. Patriots management had not yet been advised that an investigation had started, but Mr. McNally, having nothing to hide, talked freely to the League personnel without even asking if someone from the team should be there with him. The second and third interviews happened within the next several days. Again, Mr. McNally gave these interviews without any Patriots representative with him. His phone was offered to League personnel for imaging, but they advised that they did not need his phone. (His phone data was later provided to the Wells investigators upon their request and prior to their interview with him.) At his third interview with League Security personnel, he was subjected to very aggressive questioning and demeaning assertions that he was lying when he denied any knowledge of improper football deflation. This approach to the issues by League personnel was consistent with their prejudgments of wrongdoing by the Patriots. Notwithstanding that he had already been interviewed three times, when Mr. Wells asked to interview him again, the Patriots agreed to facilitate that fourth interview. That agreement was based on an explicit understanding reached with the Wells investigators: barring unanticipated circumstances, individuals would only be interviewed by the Wells investigators one time.

Based on this understanding, the Patriots asked Mr. McNally, a game day only employee with whom the team had no ongoing employment relationship, to leave his full-time, out-of-state job in order to be available for an interview at the stadium. Prior to the interview, the Patriots prevailed upon Mr. McNally to allow his personal phone to be checked for any relevant information, all of which was provided to the Wells investigators before the interview. The investigators therefore had all of Mr. Jastremski’s texts (which were provided three weeks before Mr. McNally was interviewed) as well as Mr. McNally’s phone records. The Wells investigators brought four lawyers to the McNally interview. They spent the entire day with him. He gave over seven hours of testimony. He answered every question. Among other things, the Wells investigators inquired at length about texts with Mr. Jastremski. Having taken a day off work, he was willing to stay as long as it took to finish. The interview did not end until the investigation team exhausted every topic and question they had.

Thus, when subsequently asked for what would have been a fifth interview of Mr. McNally, Patriots counsel wanted to understand what unanticipated circumstances warranted this, including whether the interview would be limited to matters that were simply not available to the investigators during Mr. McNally’s prior interview. The Patriots advised the investigators of their reluctance to have Mr. McNally back yet again, particularly given the media harassment he and his family had suffered as a result of prior leaks of Mr. McNally’s name and hometown. The distress to him and his family caused by the ensuing media attention was described in detail to the investigators. With this background, there was a high hurdle before the Patriots would ask Mr. McNally to appear yet again for what would be his fifth interview, and a particular desire to be sure that the standard for another interview — unanticipated circumstances — was met.

While the report states that certain of Mr. Jastremski’s texts were not “discovered” until after this interview (pg. 75, footnote 47), there is no question that the investigators had all such texts in their possession and available for the questioning. They apparently just overlooked them, identifying them now as a matter they wanted to cover in yet another interview. (pg. 75) Although asked numerous times for the reason for their request for yet another interview with Mr. McNally, the Wells investigators never stated the reason that now appears evident from the Report: They had overlooked texts in their earlier interviews and wanted the opportunity to ask about them. This information would have confirmed what is now clear. The request was inconsistent with the interview protocol agreed to at the outset.

Although receiving no assurances that the requested additional Mr. McNally interview would satisfy the agreed-upon interview protocol, Patriots counsel nonetheless suggested that there might be ways other than another in-person interview to get whatever further information was sought. Patriots counsel offered to be of assistance in those respects. There was no follow-up from the investigators. It now appears that the Patriots are being severely punished because the Wells investigative team apparently overlooked materials they had in their possession long before their interview with Mr. McNally — scarcely an “unanticipated circumstance” calling for yet another interview — and refused to disclose their reason for an additional interview. There was no refusal to cooperate by the Patriots.

 

[eom]

3) racist

 

[Bobsyouruncle]

The first two boils down to the idea that if you did nothing wrong there's no reason to resist Wells even beyond what was previously agreed to. I think we know that isn't true, and we know that Wells could use unrelated messages for character assassination (like he did in MIA and in this report). Brady may have complained about BB, or Kraft. Simply releasing thise texts could cause harm.

I think the White House thing is a red herring. Brady was praised in some circles, derided in others, but most people probably don't know or care. I don't think it affects the general public opinion that he cheated.

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

1) Look at past experiences with the Dolphins bullying case and how those texts were leaked damaging Incognito's reputation ( is that even possible?). Maybe Brady figured that his personal things would get leaked and it was not bargained for in the CBA...if it was a company phone but it was his personal one...
2) The Patriots recognized that it was a witchhunt and nothing was going to change Wells mind and once they had an agreement that interview #4 was the last one, they were sticking to it, Wells be damned and the sham report be damned....


A 3) I think he thought there would be deflategate jokes ( as there were) and maybe he was pi**ed off at Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest for poking fun at him in a press conference.. Maybe he decided he had been to these "dog and pony" shows and didn't need to be part of someone's photo op....

 

[thomas144]

I was reading the Wells report today (for the first time since it came out) - one of the things that struck me was that they talk about deleted text messages on Jastremki's phone. The reason I found this interesting is that I think we've been thinking that there would be nothing to be gained from getting access to Brady's cellphone, but if they were not able to recover all the messages from Jastremski's phone, there might be. Here's (some of) the passage I am referring to:

According to Renaissance, the recipient cannot be identified (and is referenced as recovered-19) because these
messages had been deleted, but were still partially recoverable by the forensic tools used to image Jastremski‟s
cell phone. Although Renaissance was able to retrieve limited information about certain deleted messages from
Jastremski‟s phone, the contact information could not be fully recovered. In addition, Renaissance was unable
to determine with certainty when the recovered messages were deleted or whether there were other relevant
deleted messages (i.e., deleted messages that left no recoverable information at all).

I've been changing my views on deflategate pretty much weekly - I found the description of the handling of the balls before the game to be pretty sobering. It sure sounds like McNally was doing something very out of the ordinary.

 

[XLIX]

(1) Yee claimed that Brady did not divulge his personal texts because doing so would create a "dangerous precedent" going forward. I don't understand this logic. It just makes no sense. There is no "precedent" being created. If there was, it is irrelevant to a lawyer's job to defend his client, not future clients. And since Goodell can just suspend someone for noncooperation, if there is a precedent being set, it's in the opposite direction.

I think it is indeed a dangerous precedent to surrender your cell phone for an on field transgression.

What's next? "Holding.... number 76, offense.... 10 yard penalty, and number 76 must give his text messages to the league office.... still 1st down..."

I also wonder why Gostkowski wasn't suspended since he refused to give up his cell phone also. (I am not saying I want Gostkowski to be suspended, it just supports the notion that person(s) at the league office were laser-focused on going after Brady)

(3) The most surprising to me of all these is Brady's decision not to go the White House. How could his lawyers have let him skip that? Brady's explanations, that he had a "prior family commitment" make no sense: why can't he have broken the commitment? The explanation, which sounds fake even if it isn't, just hurt Brady's credibility exactly when he needed it helped.

I don't see how going to the White House would have impacted his credibility in the slightest when the report got released.

 

[seven]

I think it is indeed a dangerous precedent to surrender your cell phone for an on field transgression.

Good fishin though.

This issue affects us all.
Imagine our workplace demanding our phones, PC's?

What do you have to hide then?

I don't see how going to the White House would have impacted his credibility in the slightest when the report got released.

I agree, mostly.

Especially agree wrt to the heavyweight long term Big D honorabe operative Wells,
because he is an impartial, trusted, independent and utterly integrity ridden fellow.
/?

******************
I did recently note Tom Brady's name made a
high profile didn't know they were conservative list.
So, a useful tool. Hate already included, distracts from facts.
More smoke. Same thing, different arena.

Dog name scooby actually got pol pop twits traction.