A long-awaited report commissioned by the NFL and conducted by former FBI Dir Robert Mueller was released this afternoon and found that no one at the NFL received the video of Ray Rice punching his wife in a casino elevator before it was revealed by TMZ on Sept. 8. The AP reported shortly after the TMZ disclosure that someone at the league called a New Jersey law enforcement official and left a voice message April 9 confirming receipt of the video. Mueller’s team went through 1,583 calls made that day from the NFL and found none that matched the description of the call in the AP report.
The report said Mueller offered the AP a chance to look at the phone numbers and match it to their alleged source, and the wire service turned it down. The AP in a statement said, “We have reviewed the report and stand by our original reporting. The Mueller team did ask us for source material and other newsgathering information, but we declined. Everything that we report and confirm goes into our stories. We do not offer up reporters’ notes and sources.” The Atlantic City Police Department also declined to participate in the investigation, Mueller wrote.
However, Mueller did not let the NFL completely off the hook. He criticized the league for relying on law enforcement proceedings to conclude before dishing out discipline, a setup the league no longer follows after the Dec. 10 unveiling of its new personal conduct policy.
