If you are doing an investigation, why wouldn’t you talk to your lead investigator before making a decision?
Unless your mind was made up to use a player as a scapegoat because of your previous failures in dealing with similar issues.
Here is the startling info from Clarence Hill of The Star Telegram.
Elliott’s camp promised controverting evidence to the league’s 13-month domestic violence investigation of Elliott, based on claims made by former girlfriend Tiffany Thompson. The possible bombshell evidence came in the form of NFL lead investigator Kia Roberts.
Roberts recommended no suspension for Elliott following her interviews with Thompson during the investigation _ a fact she testified to during the appeals hearing with Henderson, according to a source.
Roberts’ recommendation never made it into the NFL’s final report and the official suspension letter on Aug. 11, which cited the league’s findings of three instances of domestic violence by Elliott against Thompson based on the victim’s testimony and photographic evidence.
Even more troubling is that when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell conducted a meeting to discuss discipline for Elliott, it included Lisa Friel, the senior vice president for investigations, Jeff Pash, executive vice president and general counsel and Adolpho Birch, senior vice president of labor policy and government affairs, among others.
But Roberts was not at the meeting, where Friel recommended a six-game suspension to Goodell.
It was testified during the appeal hearing that Friel barred Roberts from the meeting, per a source.
So, the NFL barred their own lead investigator who found that Thompson was lying about the domestic violence she claimed Elliott committed against her. She was the only person who even spoke to Thompson so wouldn’t she be best suited to determine her trustworthiness?
On top of that the woman who barred her is a lifelong Giants fan.
This option largely comes down to a woman named Lisa Friel, whose league office is adorned with portraits of giants: the former Giants quarterback Phil Simms, the current Giants quarterback Eli Manning — and, most tellingly, Robert M. Morgenthau, the august former Manhattan district attorney.
To begin with, she is a devout Giants fan, a season-ticket holder whose basement in her Brooklyn apartment is, as The Daily Beast once reported, a blue-and-red shrine to the Jints. Among her earliest memories of growing up in New Jersey is watching a Giants game on a black-and-white television and asking her father: “Who are we rooting for, Daddy? The ones in the black uniforms or the ones in the white uniforms?”
How is this considered fair and balanced?
Zeke is proactively suing to void his suspension as he should.
Here we go again: NFLPA vs NFL, this time over Ezekiel Elliott. pic.twitter.com/XAoeR3FpNV
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 1, 2017
Flip the pages for all the evidence that the NFL doesn’t want you to see…