Sheriff: 'Goofus' NFL investigator never identified himself in Brown case
As more details surface about the Josh Brown domestic violence case, the NFL continues to look worse and worse.
After the NFL released a statement claiming they were denied information and access to evidence by the King County Sheriff's department regarding Brown's case, Sheriff John Urquhart didn't sit idly by as his department was made to be the fall guy.
"I don’t like to get pushed around by a bully," Urquhart told KIRO Radio on Thursday. "I don’t like the NFL taking shots at the sheriff’s office when it’s not deserved."
The New York Giants and the NFL have been scrambling to figure out what to do with the 37-year-old kicker after police documents revealed he admitted to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Brown was suspended one game for what he previously described as a "single moment," though there's evidence to suggest the league and team were aware it was more than once.
While the NFL claim they attempted to contact the office - both orally and in writing - requesting information, Urquhart refuted that claim, stating the NFL's investigator never actually identified himself as being from the NFL.
Instead, he was just "some goofus."
Had they gone through the proper channels, through public disclosure, and my public disclosure folks said 'gosh, the NFL is looking for this case,' they would have come to me and I would have said exactly the same thing, ‘We cannot release the case file.’ But since this is a hot-button item in the NFL, since it’s the NFL, we probably would have told them orally a little bit more about what we had, but we don't have them calling us here. We’ve got some goofus from Woodinville named Rob Agnew asking for the case file. We have no idea who he is.
Urquhart said Agnew submitted a public disclosure form using a Comcast email address and failed to mention anywhere that he worked for the NFL. Urquhart admitted they could have dug deeper to figure out Agnew's identity, but maintained his office was in the right concerning the investigation.
"We had no idea who this yokel is," said Urquhart. "To our discredit, perhaps, we didn’t use the Google, to Google this guy’s name ... Turns out that he is a security representative based in Seattle for the NFL.
"But he never told us that. The NFL never told us that. At no time has the NFL ever filed a written public disclosure request for any of these files. Period. It’s never happened."
- With h/t to Deadspin