An explosive ESPN report asserts that Donald Trump – acting on behalf of New England Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft – offered Senator Arlen Specter money if he dropped his calls for an investigation into the NFL’s handling of ‘Spygate.’ Specter, since deceased, believed the NFL covered-up for the Patriots, who were accused of secretly spying on opponents during a multi-championship run in the 2000s.
After the Patriots were caught taping the New York Jets’ signals from the sideline in 2007, they were fined $250,000 by the NFL and lost a draft pick. Head coach Bill Belichick was forced to pay $500,000. Specter, unsatisfied with the NFL’s brisk inquiry, repeatedly pressed the league to pursue a thorough investigation. He threatened to re-examine the NFL’s anti-trust exemption if they didn’t undertake a satisfactory review of the scandal.
And that’s where Trump enters.
In Specter’s 2012 book, Life Among the Cannibals, he describes an exchange with an unidentified figure:
“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.'”
On Wednesday, ESPN reported that Shanin Specter, the senator’s son, confirmed the mutual friend is Trump. “My father told me that Trump was acting as a messenger for Kraft,” Shanin told ESPN.
Likewise, Specter’s ghostwriter, Charles Robbins, believes Trump was the unidentified third party. Robbins told ESPN, “I was pretty darn sure the offer was made by Trump. At the time, it didn’t seem like such an important moment. Back then, Trump was a real estate hustler and a TV personality.”
Trump and Specter, who represented Pennsylvania and famously switched party affiliations to become a Democrat in 2009, have a long history. Trump routinely donated to Specter’s campaigns and he hosted fundraisers for the senator. They also shared a politically connected friend: Roger Stone. Stone served as chairman of Specter’s 1996 presidential campaign; he’s long been associated with Trump, who pardoned him last year.
Shanin Specter, an attorney, believes that Trump was dangling campaign contributions, not an outright bribe. He told ESPN, “My father was upset when [such overtures] would happen because he felt as if it were tantamount to a bribe solicitation, though the case law on this subject says it isn’t. … He would tell me these things when they occurred. We were very close.”
The full ESPN report describes Trump’s relationship with Kraft in great detail – the two golfing buddies have been close for years. Trump became a big Patriots fan and was particularly interested in the team’s star quarterback, Tom Brady:
At one point, Trump wanted his daughter Ivanka to date Brady. “You have to meet him!” Trump told her, according to the book “Raising Trump.” Ivanka wasn’t interested, and she married Jared Kushner in 2009 — the same year Brady married Gisele Bundchen. Trump later reportedly mused to Kraft that he could have had Tom Brady as a son-in-law but instead ended up with Kushner, who “is about half the size of Tom Brady’s forearm,” according to the book “Kushner, Inc.”
Through spokespeople, both Trump and Kraft denied that they offered Specter money.
