Donald Trump allegedly tried to bribe late United States Senator Arlen Specter in an attempt to squash his inquiry into the New England Patriots' Spygate scandal, according to ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham.
Specter began looking into Spygate in late 2007 and was alarmed at the NFL's fast investigation into the matter. He smelled something fishy and wrote multiple times to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:
Goodell then briefly reopened the league investigation days later and ordered his most trusted aide, league general counsel Jeff Pash, to stomp a handful of spying videotapes to pieces inside a Gillette Stadium conference room. The punishments had been delivered before the evidence was collected and then quickly destroyed. To Specter and others, this looked, at best, like an amateur investigation or, worse, like a cover-up. And then Goodell did not respond to either of Specter's letters seeking an explanation.
Early 2008 is when this alleged bribe from Trump occurred, based on the testimony of Specter's oldest son, Shanin, and Charles Robbins, Specter's longtime communications aide and the ghostwriter of two memoirs. Trump allegedly told Specter that if he “laid off the Patriots, there'd be a lot of money in Palm Beach” and that this offer was on behalf of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Shanin Specter believes the offer was actually for campaign contributions:
“My father told me that Trump was acting as a messenger for Kraft,” Shanin Specter says. “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.”
Arlen Specter was reportedly furious about the offer but never reported it to authorities. Trump and Kraft both deny an attempt to influence the investigation, and Specter himself didn't disclose what exactly happened in any of his memoirs (it's unclear why). It should be noted that Trump and Specter were friends, and Trump was a consistent political donor (his last campaign contribution was in March 2008). Specter also asked Kraft for campaign cash in 2010 but didn't get any.
Specter's Spygate investigation was stonewalled by the NFL throughout and ultimately amounted to very little. There are still plenty of mysteries surrounding it, and we likely will never know what really went down with the Patriots and this whole saga.
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