Ted Wells responds to 'personal attacks,' defends Deflategate report

Investigator Ted Wells, in breaking with his past protocol in speaking about high-profile cases, vehemently defended his report on the Patriots "Deflategate" case Tuesday afternoon via a conference call with select media conducted by the NFL's public relations department and railed against the idea he was influenced by the league or that the Patriots were targeted by a "sting operation."

Wells began the call by attacking his detractors, which have included Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Don Yee, the agent for quarterback Tom Brady, and then took questions, many of them directed at concerns Yee has raised in the conclusions reached by the investigation. Wells made it clear that snippets of the text messages between Patriots employees James McNally ("The Deflator" who worked on the sidelines) and locker room attendant John Jastremski -- both suspended indefinitely by the franchise as part of the NFL's stern discipline in the matter -- were a driving force in his determination that it was more probable than not that Brady at least knew of a plot to illegally deflate balls.

More than anything else, Wells felt compelled to speak out publically, a rarity for him in the aftermath of his investigations, based on the allegations made by Yee and others about the credibility of his findings and his long ties to the NFL.

"This the first time that after I've issued my report that I find somebody is questioning my independence and in some way suggesting I was influenced by the league office," Wells said, "and I think that is wrong ... But for those personal attacks, I'll be candid with you, I would not have responded."

Wells said that his past work in NFL investigations and his law firm's role in the league's concussion litigation was well known before he began this job, and neither the Patriots nor Yee raised objections to those relationships or dealings prior to him beginning this task. "No one at the Patriots or in Mr. Brady's camp raised any issues about my independence or integrity to judge the evidence impartially and fairly," at that time, Wells said.

When asked about his compensation, Wells said that the NFL was billed by the hour and that "no question it's in the millions of dollars."

The NFL issued historically significant penalties to the Patriots roughly a week after Wells delivered his 243-page report concluding that there was, in his estimation, most definitely cheating going on with how the team was handling the footballs. Brady was suspended four games from the upcoming 2015 season, while the team was fined a league-record $1M and stripped of two draft picks (a 2016 first-round selection and a 2017 fourth-round pick). Yee was quick to announce his intent to appeal the suspension on Monday, and it remains unclear if Kraft will take measures to appeal at this time. The matter could end up in a courtroom as well pending Commissioner Roger Goodell's appointment of a hearing officer and/or the outcome of the appeal process.

Wells defended his use of the "more probable than not" standard to reach his conclusions in noting that is the civil standard and one applied most often in these types of investigations. "We reached conclusions based on the preponderance of the evidence standard," he said.

Wells returned several times, in defending his report, to exchanges between McNally and Jastremski about potentially doctoring footballs, including one portion where McNally texted about possibly taking information to ESPN. While to some it might be unclear as to whether that was in jest or hyperbolic in nature, Wells viewed it as damning evidence of a conspiracy and, in the final remarks to the press on the conference call, returned to that text exchange about taking the story to ESPN again.

"No one can see it as a joke," Wells stated. "It is direct evidence, and it is culpatory."

Yee has objected to the way Brady's participation in the investigation was portrayed in Wells' report, both the extent to which Brady cooperated with investigators and the lengths that the future Hall of Fame quarterback was willing to go to hand over potential evidence Wells was seeking. Wells says he never asked for Brady's phone in any capacity but rather was fine with Yee keeping possession of the phone and only turning over "documentation" of certain correspondences and would "trust" that whatever Yee turned over would be an accurate depiction of those messages. Wells was asked if it was "rare" not to have subjects turn over such documentation in his investigations and he responded in the affirmative, coming up with only one example in a past NBAPA investigation where someone would not, noting that person was later charged with fraud.

"I don't think it undermines in any way the conclusions of the report," Wells said of the lack of access to Brady's phone details. "I do believe that if I had access to Brady's electronic messages and if I had received all of the messages that it might have yielded additional insights into what happened, and I think that would have been good for everybody regardless of what it showed. And it's disappointing they would say on one hand they were cooperative, yet refuse to give me access to the electronic data."

The NFL, in handing down the harsh sentences in letters to Brady and the Patriots on Monday, made it clear that a lack of full cooperation in this investigation, as well as their past indiscretions in the "Spygate" matter, factored into the scope of the discipline. Wells was also displeased that he could not get a second interview with McNally after discovering new text messages after their first conversation, but he said the Patriots legal team "said they would not even tell him about my request for an interview." McNally was also questioned three times by NFL Security.

Wells also went to lengths to try to discredit the notion this was a set-up by the NFL. He says the Patriots "were all over me from Day One," about their concerns that this was a sting by the league or certain parties, and that the team should have been warned of the Colts' complaints prior to the AFC Championship Game, and/or the NFL should have intervened to ensure all balls were within complaint levels before and during the game. He says that despite the chatter going on in league circles about balls being possibly deflated by New England and despite several attempts by Indianapolis officials to alert the NFL to the possibility, the officiating crew did not believe it to be out of the ordinary, and "no one at the league office took the complaints seriously."

With the Patriots raising these concerns at the onset, Wells said he made sure to "keep a sharp eye for any evidence that in some way the decision to check the balls at halftime or how the measurements were done at halftime might have been affected by some type of bias ... I did not find any evidence of bias." Wells also noted it was incongruous to him that the league might want to find evidence of misdoings here by one of the iconic players in the history of the game, and he found nothing to back up that claim.

There have been questions raised as well as to the discrepancies in some measuring done to the balls, from two different gauges, and Wells deferred to Lorin Reisner, who dealt with more of the scientific areas of the report, on that matter. Reisner maintained that among the Patriots' balls used in the first half of the game, "the difference of pressure drop was found to be statistically significant regardless of the gauge."

Despite an early press release on this investigation noting the participation of Jeff Pash, the league's chief legal counsel, Wells said that Pash only helped facilitate witness requests but played no actual role in gathering information, interviewing people or drawing conclusions. Wells said he spoke to Pash and himself had concerns about the wording of that press release ("I didn't know that statement was going to be in there in advance," and he called Pash to clarify and make clear that "this is my investigation," and that Wells ran it independently.

The reality is, there is unlikely no quick conclusion in sight. The appeals process, to say nothing of any court dealings, could be quite lengthy and short of a smoking gun linking Brady directly to imploring other personnel to illegally interfere with game balls after they have been inspected by officials, some will maintain doubts about the degree of evidence and the severity of the penalties handed down. In the meantime, with Yee raising concerns about the amount of Brady's actual testimony that made its way into Wells' report, the investigator urged the agent, who was sitting in on the interview, to release as much of it as he likes.

"He should publish the notes, and stop acting like there is some secret in the notes," Wells said.