When the NFL first announced that Deflategate would be investigated, it hired Ted Wells to lead what the league termed an “independent” investigation. More than seven months later, Judge Richard Berman has made clear that he doubts Wells’s independence.
In his opinion vacating Tom Brady’s suspension, Berman put the word “independent” in quotation marks when he used it to refer to Wells’s investigation. And Wells made clear that he believes the NFL’s handling of Wells’s investigation was unfair to Brady, noting that NFL general counsel Jeff Pash was allowed to edit Wells’s report, while Brady was not allowed to question Pash.