The Complete Critique of the Freeh Report available here
Tim Lewis, a former federal judge and federal prosecutor, and an attorney for Spanier, called the report a "blundering and indefensible indictment" of the ex-president.
"There is nothing ... full or complete about the Freeh report as it applies to Dr. Spanier," Lewis said.
He called the Freeh report "a myth."
"There is nothing ... full or complete about the Freeh report as it applies to Dr. Spanier," Lewis said.
He called the Freeh report "a myth."
• That the report is neither as thorough nor as complete as Mr. Freeh said because at least four of the key people involved in the situation either refused or could not be interviewed.
• That the report took on a prosecutorial bent instead of being the "independent" work that was commissioned.
• That the report leaves out significant pieces of information -- such as the fact that nearly all of the emails exchanged among university administrators before 2004 were wiped out in a technology changeover and that testimony from the Sandusky trial runs counter to the Freeh conclusions.
• That the report ignores the fact that law enforcement concluded there was no sexual abuse by Mr. Sandusky based on allegations raised against him in 1998 and no charges were filed.
• That the report "cherry picked" statements to support investigators' claims instead of presenting a witness' full interview and context.
• And that, even though Mr. Freeh said his team interviewed 430 people and reviewed 3.5 million documents, only a small fraction of that is depicted in the report.
The news conference was led by Timothy K. Lewis, a former federal district and circuit court judge, now in private practice.
Mr. Lewis introduced the rest of Mr. Spanier's defense team, noting that all of the members are also former federal prosecutors, like Mr. Freeh.
"I give you this background so you may be assured we are quite familiar with the difference between an 'independent, full and complete investigation,' which the university commissioned Judge Freeh to perform, and the blundering and indefensible indictment he and his staff produced," Mr. Lewis said.
He went on to call the Freeh report "a flat-out distortion of facts so infused with bias and innuendo that it is, quite simply, unworthy of the confidence that has been placed in it, let alone the reported $6.5 million the university paid for it."
Following the release of the report July 12, the NCAA announced its sanctions against Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a four-year ban on postseason play, the stripping of all wins from 1998 to 2011, and a five-year probationary period.
The night before those sanctions were announced, Mr. Spanier sent a letter to the Penn State Board of Trustees in which he explained to them that he felt misled by the university's general counsel during the Sandusky grand jury investigation.
In addition, Mr. Spanier sent a lengthy list of inaccuracies, misrepresentations and factual errors he believed were in the Freeh report to Penn State's new general counsel.
Today, however, is the first time Mr. Spanier's attorneys have spoken extensively about the report.
The critique of the report by Mr. Spanier's attorneys notes that the Freeh investigators did not interview Penn State's former outside counsel, Wendell Courtney, or the prosecutor who refused to press charges against Mr. Sandusky for an alleged incident of sexual misconduct in 1998.
Both refused to speak with the Freeh group.
In addition, Mr. Lewis notes that Mike McQueary, a then-graduate assistant working for the football program who witnessed an incident in the locker room showers in 2001 between Mr. Sandusky and a young boy, was not interviewed at the request of the state attorney general's office.
Nor was Jonathan Dranov questioned. A family friend and physician, he testified at Mr. Sandusky's trial that Mr. McQueary did not describe what he saw that night in the showers as anything sexual.
Mr. Curley and Mr. Schultz testified before the grand jury last year that Mr. McQueary described something like "horseplay" between the coach and the boy -- nothing of a sexual nature.
Mr. Spanier testified that the incident was described to him as "horsing around in the shower," but that it made a member of Mr. Curley's staff "uncomfortable."
During a five-hour interview with Mr. Freeh, Mr. Spanier repeated that information, and "unequivocally denied that he had ever heard a report about a sexual act involving a child," Mr. Lewis said.
