The infamous spygate videotape cheating scandal surrounding the New England Patriots was so long ago at this point that, chances are, most people don’t really give it any thought at this point. But apparently, there were some seriously juicy tidbits of info surrounding that 15-year-old scandal that wasn’t released at the time. And, wouldn’t you know, they involved the guy that later went on to become president and ruin our lives for four long years. Because, at this point, what doesn’t involve that walking, talking human garbage?
According to a new report from ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, the now ex-president Donald Trump held a 2008 meeting with the late Senator Arlen Specter and pretty much tried to bribe him into dropping the investigation. According to the report, Trump offered Specter “money in Palm Beach” in exchange for dropping the investigation into the Patriots’ spygate scandal. The reports claim that Donald Trump, then just a real estate “mogul” and reality TV “star” was acting on behalf of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft when he made the offer.
Spokespeople for both Trump and Kraft have released statements on the reporting, denying any involvement in trying to influence Specter’s investigation into the scandal.
“This is completely false,” Senior Advisor to Trump, Jason Miller, said. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.” Miller declined to answer any follow-up questions on the matter.
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A spokesperson for the Patriots said Kraft “never asked Donald Trump to talk to Arlen Specter on his behalf.”
“Mr. Kraft is not aware of any involvement of Trump on this topic and he did not have any other engagement with Specter or his staff,” the spokesperson said in an email in response to the allegations.
Specter’s longtime communications aide, Charles Robbins told ESPN that his old boss first told him of the alleged spygate money meeting in 2010, during a conversation that was recorded on tape for Specter’s final memoir.
The conversation then appeared in that memoir, titled, Life Among the Cannibals:
On the signal stealing, a mutual friend had told me that ‘if I laid off the Patriots, there’d be a lot of money in Palm Beach.’ And I replied, ‘I couldn’t care less.'”
Specter never told Robbins the name of the “mutual friend” when he recounted this story for his memoir, but Robbins said he was “pretty darn sure” it was Donald Trump, as Specter and Trump had a longstanding friendship.
However, Specter’s son, Shanin Specter, gets a lot more specific in his recount of events and, despite the denials from both Trump and Kraft, asserts that it was the soon-to-be-former president who offered the money to his father in exchange for a dropped investigation.
Speaking via ESPN, Shanin Specter said:
My father told me that Trump was acting as a messenger for Kraft. But I’m equally sure the reference to money in Palm Beach was campaign contributions, not cash. The offer was Kraft assistance with campaign contributions. … My father said it was Kraft’s offer, not someone else’s.”
Ultimately, Specter turned down the offer of “money in Palm Beach” (an offer that isn’t actually illegal if the funds were offered as a campaign contribution) and continued on with his investigation.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
