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BOSTON — Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez had a severe case of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, researchers said on Thursday. His lawyer announced a lawsuit against the NFL and the team, accusing them of hiding the true dangers of the sport.
Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the CTE Center at Boston University, said Hernandez had stage 3 (out of 4) of the disease, which can cause violent mood swings, depression and other cognitive disorders.
“We’re told it was the most severe case they had ever seen for someone of Aaron’s age,” attorney Jose Baez said.
Hernandez was 27 when he killed himself in April in the prison cell where he was serving a life-without-parole sentence for murder. Baez said Hernandez had shown signs of memory loss, impulsivity and aggression that could be attributed to CTE.
“When hindsight is 20-20, you look back and there are things you might have noticed,” he said. “But you don’t know.”
Aaron Hernandez leaves us with one final ‘Why?’
Just when the former NFL star, a convicted murderer, was told he might have something to live for, he’s gone. It’s one more thing we don’t understand.
CTE, which can be diagnosed only in an autopsy, has been found in former members of the military, football players, boxers and others who have been subjected to repeated head trauma. A recent study found signs of the disease in 110 of 111 NFL players whose brains were inspected.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court claimed that the league and the Patriots failed to protect their players’ safety, leading to the disease that deprived Hernandez’s 4-year-old daughter, Avielle, of her father’s companionship.
“Defendants were fully aware of the dangers of exposing NFL players, such as Aaron, to repeated traumatic head impacts,” the lawsuit said. “Yet, defendants concealed and misrepresented the risks of repeated traumatic head impacts.”
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment. A Patriots spokesman did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The league recently agreed to pay $1 billion to retired players who claimed it misled them about the dangers of playing football.
The “loss of consortium” lawsuit filed on Thursday is independent of the class-action suit that began making payments this summer. Baez said it was the first of its kind.
“If we have to be groundbreakers in this area, it’s something we’re prepared to do,” he said.
Hernandez committed suicide just hours before his former teammates visited the White House to celebrate their latest Super Bowl victory and a week after he was acquitted in the 2012 drive-by shootings of two men in Boston.
Prosecutors had argued that Hernandez gunned the two men down after one accidentally spilled a drink on him in a nightclub, and then got a tattoo of a handgun and the words “God Forgives” to commemorate the crime.
Hernandez did not raise CTE in his defense at either trial because he claimed actual innocence.
“It’s something I deeply regret,” Baez said.
A star for the University of Florida when it won the 2008 title, Hernandez dropped to the fourth round of the NFL draft because of trouble in college that included a failed drug test and a bar fight. His name had also come up in an investigation into a shooting.
In three seasons with the Patriots, Hernandez joined Rob Gronkowski to form one of the most potent tight end duos in NFL history. In 2011, his second season, Hernandez caught 79 passes for 910 yards and seven touchdowns to help the team reach the Super Bowl, and he was rewarded with a $40 million contract.
But the Patriots released him in 2013, shortly after he was arrested in the killing of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancée. Hernandez was convicted and sentenced to life in prison; the conviction was voided because he died before his appeals were exhausted, though that ruling is itself being appealed.
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President Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G-20 summit in Hamburg on July 7. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported another contact between someone connected to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and a person with links to the Russian government.
In this case, it was Paul Manafort, who was a chairman of Trump’s campaign. While in that role, he emailed with a longtime business associate of his, suggesting that, if desired, a private briefing on the campaign could be arranged for the oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Two weeks later, Trump accepted his party’s presidential nomination.
Again: This was just one of many such connections. None of these contacts by themselves prove that Trump’s team was intentionally working with Russian agents to ensure his victory in November. (Though the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower that was predicated on information from the Russian government certainly shows some willingness to do so.) Because there is a question about such a relationship, though, we thought it appropriate to map out where and when Russian interests overlapped with Trump’s team.
Walking through those contacts in chronological order:
Dec. 10, 2015: Michael Flynn, an early Trump supporter who would eventually be named national security adviser, travels to Moscow for an event honoring the Kremlin-backed news outlet RT. There, he participates in a banquet during which he shares a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
January 2016: Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, emails Putin’s spokesperson seeking help with a real estate development project in Moscow. The project is eventually abandoned.
April 27: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, meets with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a campaign event at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. Jeff Sessions, then a senator and eventually Trump’s attorney general, may have greeted Kislyak as well.
June 6: Donald Trump Jr. may have spoken by phone with Emin Agalarov, a musician and developer who worked with the Trumps on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Trump Jr. and Agalarov each claim not to remember speaking, but the following day a meeting is set up between Trump Jr. and other campaign staff predicated on the sharing of information detrimental to Democrat Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.
June 9: That meeting happens. It includes Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort. They meet with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer linked to the Russian government, and Rinat Akhmetshin, who has ties to Russian intelligence.
July 7: Manafort offers to brief Deripaska.
July 7: Carter Page, identified by Trump as an adviser on foreign policy, travels to Moscow — with the campaign’s blessing — for an event.
July 18: At an event at the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak greet each other.
Sept. 8: Sessions and Kislyak meet again, this time in Sessions’s Senate office. At some point, Sessions and Kislyak apparently discuss the campaign.
Oct. 11: Trump Jr. gives a speech in Paris to a group linked to Russian interests. One of the organizers later briefs the Kremlin on the event.
Dec. 1: Flynn and Kushner meet with Kislyak at Trump Tower. At this meeting, they allegedly discuss setting up a secret communications system between Trump’s team and Moscow.
Dec. 8: Page again travels to Moscow for an event.
Dec. 13: Kushner, apparently at Kislyak’s urging, meets with Sergey Gorkov, head of the Russian bank VEB, which is under sanctions. The next day, Gorkov travels to Japan, where Putin was visiting.
Dec. 25: Flynn texts Kislyak.
Dec. 29: Flynn speaks with Kislyak multiple times, apparently discussing the imminent imposition of new sanctions by the U.S. government, partly in response to Russian meddling in the campaign.
On July 7 of this year, Trump and Putin finally meet face-to-face.
Our complete interactive timeline of the Trump-Russia question.
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