DeflateGate: Ted Wells Contradicts Himself and Lies to Cover

It should be generally accepted fact that the Wells Report isn't worth its own weight. There are scientific flaws, obvious biases, a willingness to ignore context, and inferences that they take as evidence. It's not a good document

So it should come as no surprise that Ted Wells is contradicting him report after the Patriots put him on blast. Remember that Wells' team agreed to just one interview per person, barring extreme circumstances. Wells overlooked a text prior to his interview with Jim McNally and tried to use that as a reason for a second interview. The Patriots weren't going to reward his incompetence. Here's Pro Football Talk with more.

Via Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post, Wells addressed the contention from the team's WellsReportContext.com website that Wells had in his possession all relevant text messages before Wells questioned McNally the first time. Which means that a follow-up interview wasn't necessary, because it wasn't based on any new evidence or developments.

Wells explained to Hubbuch that, because the message in which McNally calls himself the "Deflator" was sent in May 2014, Wells hadn't noticed it before questioning McNally the first time, since Wells had gone through only the text messages from the 2014 football season at that point.

At page 87, Wells quotes a text message from November 2014 in which McNally said, "Deflate and give somebody that [jacket]." Wells then explains in the report, "We planned to discuss this message with McNally during our requested follow-up interview. As noted above, we were unable to do so because counsel for the Patriots refused to make McNally available."

In other words, Wells' comments to Hubbuch are not factually accurate. Wells now says didn't notice the May 2014 "Deflator" text message because he had reviewed only the text messages sent during the 2014 football season, and yet the Wells report expressly states that he wanted to question McNally a second time about one of the text messages sent during the 2014 football season.

Essentially, in the Wells Report, Wells states he wanted a follow-up interview to talk about a text from November 2014. He then comes out, after the report, and says that he wanted to talk about the "deflator" text from May 2014, but he "overlooked it" because it wasn't from the regular season.

So Wells publishes in his report that he wanted a second interview because of a text sent during the regular season, which he had in his possession. Wells either lied in the report about wanting to meet for a November 2014 text, or he's lying now about wanting to meet for the May 2014 text. Either way, Wells' credibility is in serious concern.

And if Wells is willing to try and cover himself from these issues, it begs the question where else did he intentionally mislead in the report?