They had reason to fear fallout from violating a non-disclosure agreement with the team. Without indemnification, witnesses might have been less inclined to tell the truth and less willing to share evidence. A person familiar with the WFT investigation told Sportico the NFL refused to indemnify participants, even with a carve-out for claims arising from the wrongdoing of the participant. The NFL’s sincerity in uncovering facts has similarly attracted skepticism.
An 82-page report by an engineering firm retained by the NFL was also made public. In 2015’s Deflategate controversy, the NFL released the 139-page Wells Report, which contained myriad details gathered from witnesses and leveled sharp accusations against specific people. The league in the past has hardly been averse to issuing written reports.
While the league fined WFT $10 million in July, it declined to issue suspensions or strip draft picks, and eschewed sharing a written report about the investigation. The NFL is sitting on a trove of information, including interviews with more than 150 people and a collection of 650,000 emails. While breaches of assurances could prompt witnesses to sue the NFL, Banks stressed that sharing investigatory information is not an all-or-nothing proposition-that some details could be made public without betraying confidence and that redacted accounts could provide information without identifying victims. Attorney Lisa Banks, an attorney for 40 former WFT employees, told ESPN’s Outside the Lines that Goodell’s explanation is “disingenuous and false.”
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