In addition to interviews with NFL officials in its research of the league’s handling of the Ray Rice investigation, the team led by former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III searched the electronic devices of multiple league executives, including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
According to the Mueller Report, investigators made electronic duplications of the computers, mobile phones and tablets of Goodell and other league officials to see if anyone in the league office had possessed the video of Rice hitting his now-wife Janay Palmer before TMZ published it in September.
However, the investigators “found no evidence that any file having any of the characteristics of the in-elevator video had been downloaded, inserted into, or viewed on any devices of any of those individuals,” Mueller wrote in the 96-page report into the investigation’s findings, which were released Thursday.
Investigators took similar steps to study the electronic devices belonging to various executive assistants, including Goodell’s assistant.
The investigators, Mueller said, aimed to “examine not only the files, videos, documents, texts, and programs active on those devices, but also to recover all or parts of the files, documents, videos, texts, and programs that had been deleted before the examination—and also to determine whether efforts had been made to delete files.”
Investigators also investigated more than 400 other devices with access to the league’s network, as well as file-sharing networks accessed by league personnel, “to determine whether any computer contained evidence that a file having the characteristics of the in-elevator video had been downloaded, inserted, or viewed,” Mueller wrote.
Said Mueller: “Again, the answer was negative.”