Deadspin: NFL Received All Josh Brown Records When Reporters Did

It looks as though the NFL won’t be able to plead ignorance much longer.

The media obtained records Wednesday night from the King County (Wash.) Sheriff’s Department that included disturbing journal entries in which New York Giants kicker Josh Brown admitted to physically and emotionally abusing his wife on multiple occasions. The NFL released a statement Thursday saying it tried to obtain those documents and failed, which King County Sheriff John Urquhart swiftly refuted.

But Deadspin’s Diana Moscovitz got copies of all documented communication between the sheriff’s department and the NFL, the Giants, and NFL representatives, and as it turns out, the NFL did receive all those records at the same time reporters did.

Urquhart said Thursday that the NFL filed its public disclosure requests using a representative name Robert Agnew, who listed only a generic Comcast email address with no phone number or affiliation. The sheriff said he would have told the NFL to “be careful” about Brown had he known that’s who he was dealing with — it was an open case so the department couldn’t give details — but Agnew still received every available document at or around the same time reporters who filed requests did. The communication records Moscovitz received also showed Agnew opened the reports he received.

While the communication records aren’t perfect for determining when the Giants and NFL knew about all the details of Brown’s case, Agnew at least had the record of Brown’s May 2015 arrest on June 2, 2015, well before NJ Advanced Media used the same document to report on the arrest this August and before Brown was suspended in September.