The NFL claimed in a statement Thursday that it tried to do its due diligence in New York Giants kicker Josh Brown’s domestic violence case, but the King County (Wash.) sheriff said that’s not exactly true.
Brown was suspended for one game to start the 2016 season after a 10-month investigation into his ex-wife’s allegations that he abused her 20-plus times over the course of their marriage. The NFL’s case was closed, but Wednesday night disturbing journal entries in which Brown admitted he abused Molly Brown multiple times and that he viewed her as his “slave” surfaced, and the league and the Giants obviously have come under fire about how much they knew.
The NFL, in its statement, claimed it had tried to obtain those documents from the Kings County Sheriff’s Department and was repeatedly denied. But Sheriff John Urquhart told KIRO Radio on Thursday that the league wasn’t transparent about it and that its only two public disclosure requests were submitted by a man named Robert Agnew with a generic Comcast email address and no affiliation noted.
“Nowhere on the request does he say that he works for the NFL, and so we don’t know that it’s the NFL and we’re not going to give it out anyway, so we denied it,” Urquhart said.
“NFL, National Football League, he could have (said) any of that,” Urquhart said. “Robert Agnew, Comcast.net, post office box in Woodinville, (Wash.). We had no idea who this yokel is.”
Urquhart said the department also received calls from two people claiming to be with the NFL, but because it was an open investigation, they couldn’t just release information to anybody. He said if the league properly filed a request, it would have gone directly to him, and he would have been able to give slightly more information.
“We would have told them … ‘Be careful, NFL, don’t rush into this. This case is blossoming way more than what happened on May 22 of 2015. We’re getting more information, be careful,’ ” Urquhart said. “Again, we’re not going to give them specifics, but we certainly would have cautioned the NFL to be careful about what they were going to do.”
Urquhart called the NFL a “bully” and said he didn’t like how the league was trying to throw the sheriff’s department under the bus.
“For them to say it’s our fault that they only gave them a one-day suspension, that’s just not true,” Urquhart said. “That’s what I object to.”
Thumbnail photo via Kamil Krzaczynski/USA TODAY Sports Images
