Report: NFL had no prior knowledge of Ray Rice tapes, failed to investigate properly
By Josh Hill
The Robert Mueller Report was published on Thursday, which both cleared the NFL of any neglect while hinting that they came dangerously close to it anyways.
On Thursday afternoon, the long awaited Robert Mueller Report was released to the masses, which gave an in-depth report on the investigation by the NFL into Ray Rice’s domestic violence case.
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The Mueller Report came about in response to criticism that the NFL knew about evidence concerning the Ray Rice tape but covered it up until it was released publicly by TMZ.
The meat of the 96 page investigation was that the NFL had no prior knowledge of the second Ray Rice tape before it had been released by TMZ. This means that as much as we want to believe the NFL covered up the second tape and their knowledge of it, they were as clueless as everyone expect TMZ.
Please ponder the last part of that remark to get a total understanding of how totally not off the hook the NFL is here.
The Mueller Report states:
"As to the first question, despite extensive investigation, we have found no evidence that anyone at the League received or viewed the in-elevator video prior to its public release. Likewise, we have found no evidence of a woman at the League acknowledging receipt of that video in a voicemail message left on April 9, 2014."
However, the report didn’t totally clear the NFL of all wrongdoing, as the investigation into the investigation provided evidence that Roger Goodell and company dragged their feet the entire way through the process.
"We conclude that there was substantial information about the incident that should have put the League on notice of a need to undertake a more thorough investigation to obtain available evidence of precisely what occurred inside the elevator."
This is where that part about the NFL being as clueless as everyone except TMZ comes back into play. While Roger Goodell and the NFL didn’t know of or refuse a tape that was sent to league offices, they apparently didn’t look very hard for one either.
It’s hard to say this was neglect since saying so would be to insinuate that the NFL knew what they were looking for. But the bottom line is even though the NFL wasn’t looking for a specific tape with more evidence, they weren’t looking for much at all.
Whether it was a tape or more evidence, the Mueller Report explicitly states that the NFL did not go forth in their investigation in the manner they should have. Again, this doesn’t mean that they NFL knew of and refused evidence, it just means they didn’t care enough to look.
Now the question becomes — or remains, depending on your understanding of the investigation — why didn’t the NFL look hard? It’s been made clear they didn’t know about the second tape before TMZ released it, but the fact that they didn’t look for any other evidence save for the first tape before handing out a suspension to Rice is as board line negligent as it gets.
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