AsylumGuido

And now this from the well known Saints hater, Mike Florio. But, he is saying the same thing I am about the "declaration". Tell me now after reading this that the league and there paid mouth-piece ex-US Attorney have been truthful about what they have released to the media. Now do you realize why they have been so hesitant to release "proof"? Also, any question as to the declaration being released by the NFLPA, probably much to the chagrin of Goodell and his cronies?

Hargrove says Williams, Vitt told him to “just play dumb”

Hargrove says that, when meeting with NFL Security he “denied all knowledge of a bounty or bounty program.” Roughly a week later, Williams asked Hargrove if he stuck to the story. Hargrove said he responded in the way Williams and Vitt had instructed — Hargrove denied any knowledge of a bounty program.

Now for what Hargrove’s declaration doesn’t say. At no point in the declaration does Hargrove admit to any knowledge of the existence of a bounty program. Indeed, at no point does Hargrove claim that he was told to say anything different from what he would have otherwise said, without coaching.

In other words, Hargrove never says he was told to lie. Instead, he says he was told what to say, without commenting on whether he believed what he was told to say to be the truth.

And so, when the NFL said last week in the announcement of the suspensions of Hargrove and three other players that the declaration “established not only the existence of the program with the Saints, but also that he knew about and participated in it,” that statement was blatantly incorrect. And when “independent” counsel Mary Jo White explained in a conference call last week that the “thrust” of the declaration was Hargrove’s acknowledgment of “the nature of the program and his participation in it,” that was blatantly incorrect, too.

It may simply be semantics, given that Williams and Vitt apparently confessed to the existence of a bounty program — which necessarily means that Hargrove had lied. But in his declaration he never says that he lied, and he never admits that the bounty program existed.

The flaw in the NFL’s comments about the Hargrove declaration is subtle, but significant. The plain language of the Hargrove declaration as compared to the NFL’s characterization of it shows that the league is playing a little fast and loose with the facts. Which makes it even more critical that the league stop spoon-feeding the NFLPA and the media characterizations and summaries and conclusions, and that it start coughing up the raw data on which the characterizations and summaries and conclusions were based.

Back when I was practicing law, I’d periodically explain to a jury that, upon encountering a piece of rancid meat in a pot of beef stew, the reaction isn’t to keep eating but to dump it all out. Though the league’s mischaracterization of Hargrove’s declaration may not justify ignoring the full weight of the bounty probe, it means that, at a minimum, someone must have an opportunity to scrutinize all facts, apart from the skewed, self-serving filter the league has applied when talking about the case.