When the NFL first announced that Deflategate would be investigated, it hired Ted Wells to lead what the league termed an “independent” investigation. More than seven months later, Judge Richard Berman has made clear that he doubts Wells’s independence.
In his opinion vacating Tom Brady’s suspension, Berman put the word “independent” in quotation marks when he used it to refer to Wells’s investigation. And Wells made clear that he believes the NFL’s handling of Wells’s investigation was unfair to Brady, noting that NFL general counsel Jeff Pash was allowed to edit Wells’s report, while Brady was not allowed to question Pash.
“Denied the opportunity to examine Pash at the arbitral hearing, Brady was prejudiced. He was foreclosed from exploring, among other things, whether the Pash/Wells Investigation was truly ‘independent,’ and how and why the NFL’ s General Counsel came to edit a supposedly independent investigation report,” Berman wrote.
Berman also wrote that it was “seemingly inconsistent” for Wells’s law firm to act as counsel to the NFL while simultaneously conducting an “independent” investigation.
The NFL paid Wells millions to conduct its investigation. Judge Berman thinks that very fact shows Wells’s investigation lacks independence, because when someone is paying you millions of dollars, you’re probably going to tell them what they want to hear.