The long-running investigation into whether Vikings special teams coach Mike Priefer made homophobic comments to former punter Chris Kluwe may come to some form of resolution today (but that’s not likely), as the Minnesota Vikings have received the report from the investigators. What’s not clear is the next step, as Chris Kluwe and his attorney are holding a press conference a bit later this morning to complain that the Vikings are not releasing the report as they had agreed (or, at least, have not shared the report with Kluwe). Until the team makes some sort of official announcement, we’re watching Chris Kluwe drive the media agenda. Eric Thompson has thoughtfully prepared a handy-dandy little bingo card we can all use when the press conference gets underway:
I’ll update this post after Chris Kluwe’s press conference and the expected official team announcement/response.
Update: Shortly before Kluwe’s press conference got underway, the team released a statement on the situation.
Eden Prairie, MN (July 15, 2014) – Since Chris Kluwe’s allegations first appeared in Deadspin on January 2, 2014, the Minnesota Vikings have taken them very seriously, which is why the team immediately retained former Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court Eric Magnuson and former U.S. Department of Justice Trial Attorney Chris Madel, two partners of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, L.L.P. (RKMC), to perform an independent review of these allegations. Magnuson and Madel were asked to thoroughly and comprehensively investigate three particular allegations by Kluwe and Kluwe’s counsel:
1) Special Teams Coordinator Mike Priefer made offensive and insensitive remarks in Kluwe’s presence.
2) Representatives of the Vikings had knowledge of these comments prior to the Deadspin article publication on January 2, 2014.
3) Kluwe’s activism was the reason for his release from the Vikings on May 6, 2013.
Magnuson, Madel and others spent nearly six months conducting an exhaustive investigation. After the Vikings were given the investigative materials from Magnuson and Madel, in order to further maintain objectivity and integrity, the team engaged a nationally-prominent law firm – Littler Mendelson P.C. – to evaluate employment law matters and provide findings and recommendations to the Vikings. Those recommendations are to be provided to the team this week.
As Magnuson and Madel confirmed today, the Vikings have never made or broken promises as Kluwe and his attorney Clayton Halunen have claimed. The Vikings have also never engaged in the various comments that Kluwe and Halunen have provided to the media over the past six months. This Thursday, July 17, the team has a meeting scheduled between Halunen and Vikings attorneys to discuss next steps
Arif Hasan sums up what happened in the press conference with Kluwe and his lawyer and makes a few tentative conclusions on what will happen next:
1. Clay Halunen and Chris Kluwe will be pursuing legal action against the Vikings, largely as a means of forcing the report to be made public through the discovery process in the courts.
2. Halunen has not selected a venue or a time to pursue the case, but it looks like a lot of this may be contingent upon what happens with a meeting that he, Kluwe and the Vikings lawyers will meet on Thursday, July 17th to discuss the next steps.
3. Those steps will include discussion of a settlement. Halunen indicated that the Vikings and Kluwe were close to a settlement nearing $1,000,000 (all of which would be donated to LGBT advocacy organizations) and would make the report public, but the recent indications they received that the report would not be released have stalled that kind of settlement.
4. Kluwe and his lawyer have indicated they would reconsider a suit if the report becomes public.
5. Halunen spoke with authority to indicate that the report dispositively stated that Kluwe and his team were right and that “now we know” multiple witnesses have corroborated the specific allegation that Mike Priefer made the “nuke the gays” statement that has captured everyone’s attention.
6. Halunen indicated that the report is damning not just for Mike Priefer but the organization as a whole; according to him, there’s evidence on record (in the report) that connects Rick Spielman to the allegations and (this next part is my opinion) likely an organizational failure to resolve the problem in a legal way. This is a pretty big part of the case. As Andy Carlson from Purple For the Win points out, this has become a story about the Vikings management, not one about Kluwe.
