Disagreements In Jameis Winston Settlement Talks

Have. 

The WIP thing was during the Ford admnistration.

I'm old enough to remember it.

My first mortgage was for 13%.  That was in 1985 ... the inflation during the Ford administration was bad, but got really bad during Carter's administration.  It wasn't brought under control until mid-80's.  Still, that first mortgage carried a 13% interest rate.  Ouch.

but how can this be legal? How can you pay somebody to not cooperate with police and not report a crime? That has to be illegal, correct?

However, I believe the money was in order to also prevent a criminal trial.

Which would still leave Cronwell's statements technically true.

That may seem flippant but it isn't. Attorneys are prohibited from lying but they're certainly free to omit inconvenient facts. What they say has to be true, but it's dangerous to make inferences beyond the bare facts stipulated.

Found the full letter from the attorney [source]:

“Atlanta NFL lawyer, David Cornwell, has apparently leaked to TMZ a self-serving letter to Florida State University that is full of dishonest and distorted statements at a time when Mr. Winston is suffering from the negative attention of his own continuing misconduct of last week. Mr. Cornwell appears to know that Mr. Winston is about to be charged by Florida State with sexual assault and this letter seems to be his final attempt to prevent FSU from complying with federal law.

“The facts that Mr. Cornwell chose not to disclose are that it was he, himself, who reached out to our client’s former counsel Patricia Carroll to discuss paying off our client. Patricia Carroll didn’t even know who David Cornwell was until he called. Mr. Cornwell then himself flew down from Atlanta to negotiate with Ms. Carroll.

“Settlement discussions were immediately unproductive as Cornwell was crude and insulting going so far as to say ‘your client likes to [expletive] football players.’ When told that the client’s main concern was not money but that Winston be held accountable for his actions, Cornwell threatened to sue our client and her parents for civil racketeering in an effort to intimidate them into staying quiet. After learning about Mr. Cornwell’s unprofessional conduct at that meeting from Ms. Carroll, our office has decidedly not engaged with Mr. Cornwell at all or anyone else on Mr. Winston’s behalf. Although it our understanding that settlement was discussed, no authorized demands were made of Mr. Winston.

“Mr. Cornwell additionally and inaccurately portrays that our client chose to file a complaint ‘two years later.’ The truth is that the University approached our client in October of 2013 and asked her for the first time whether she would cooperate with disciplinary charges against Mr. Winston after the school received a second report of sexual misconduct by another woman. Our client responded that she would certainly cooperate. Since that time our client through counsel has repeatedly agreed to cooperate and meet with the University. All of these communications, including the October 2013 discussion with FSU officials, is documented. Mr. Cornwell may wish the truth were otherwise, but FSU’s own records proves him false.

“To the extent that Mr. Cornwell references statements about Mr. Winston’s race, we would doubt that Ms. Carroll made such remarks. The suggested remarks are certainly not beliefs held by our client and she would never authorize anyone to say such things.”

It's amazing to me that so many people are buying the "extortion" angle considering that it came directly from Winston's lawyer, and he didn't even mention extortion.

It's never stated anywhere that it was Cornwell that put the number on the table, just that he's the one that initiated the talks in the first place.

But, yeah, I'm ashamed that I bought the story even a little bit on first glance.