Kraft One-Ups Brady’s Departure

dcmissle

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Kraft, at this point, is the biggest name involved ... and he has come out and denied he did anything illegal. The police saying they will release the video simply might be their way of saying he might want to cut a deal before he's embarrassed further.

They're not going out of their way. They got a famous person involved in a case, which can bring attention to a serious issue. It keeps the case in the national spotlight.
We know the angle, and so do the authorities. The Kraft press release is specific and artful. “He didn’t do anything illegal.”

Translated. I didn’t pay for the hand job. That was consensual. I paid for standard massage. Prove otherwise.

If that’s all that $1500/hr from Ropes and Gray gets you these days — well that’s all they got.

Which is fine — until the tape makes it into evidence. You want to play these games, fine.

Cut your losses pal.
 

dcmissle

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That tape comes out, Kraft at a minimum is off all of those important NFL Committees. Completely untenable situation.

And we might be looking at an early step aside in favor of Jonathan as principal owner. I don’t know that the NFL would force that, but it could happen as part of the natural course of events.
 

E5 Yaz

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That tape comes out, Kraft at a minimum is off all of those important NFL Committees. Completely untenable situation.

And we might be looking at an early step aside in favor of Jonathan as principal owner. I don’t know that the NFL would force that, but it could happen as part of the natural course of events.
Yep ... money can buy common sense
 

Myt1

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We know the angle, and so do the authorities. The Kraft press release is specific and artful. “He didn’t do anything illegal.”

Translated. I didn’t pay for the hand job. That was consensual. I paid for standard massage. Prove otherwise.

If that’s all that $1500/hr from Ropes and Gray gets you these days — well that’s all they got.
Morgan Lewis. ;-)
 

BigSoxFan

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I can only imagine basically every single NFL owner pushing as hard as possible to push Bob out to help de-stabilize the Pats.
 

dcmissle

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I can only imagine basically every single NFL owner pushing as hard as possible to push Bob out to help de-stabilize the Pats.
We can only hope there has been enough time and that Jonathan is more parts Michael than Fredo. We know there are some parts Sonny.
 

nolasoxfan

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It’s been at least 4 minutes...what’s taking so long?

Looking at a human being who has been trafficked and is essentially being held against her will and participating in forcing that person to perform sex acts on you is different than looking at a bud or a line and smoking/snorting it.
Human beings should not be considered ‘commodities, nothing more nothing less.’
Don’t jump through mental hoops to try to convince yourself otherwise.
You’re absolutely right, they shouldn’t be, but they are. Thinking otherwise is burying your head in the sand.
 

E5 Yaz

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I can only imagine basically every single NFL owner pushing as hard as possible to push Bob out to help de-stabilize the Pats.
If there's one guy who knows where the bodies are buried about his fellow owners ...
 

FredJones

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That tape comes out, Kraft at a minimum is off all of those important NFL Committees. Completely untenable situation.

And we might be looking at an early step aside in favor of Jonathan as principal owner. I don’t know that the NFL would force that, but it could happen as part of the natural course of events.
One of my first thoughts when I learned the details was, "Wow, Jonathan must really have gotten tired of being #2." Now obviously it's pretty unlikely that Jonathan would do such a thing, but I think it's at least entertainable that someone caught up in the sting was targeted for embarassment, maybe Kraft or one of the several other high profile hand-jobbees.

Some things about how the cops approached the situation don't seem right to me. By several accounts in this thread, the parlor is in a fairly affluent area where many retired notables stay. If you're going to do a bust on a place like that, why not just do a small sting op and shut the place down? Why do a public name and shame with video? I'm not too familiar with LE principles in play here, but this doesn't seem like a common practice.

Maybe my brain is tingling under my tinfoil hat due to my own experiences with the local law enforcement and judicial community here, where they tend to handle everything very discreetly.

*Edit:* Continuing with this line of thinking, why don't we see more of these cases in the news? There are many neighborhoods in the country where if you pick a random massage parlor and set up a similar sting, you'd probably pull up a few familiar faces each time. Why here, why now?
 

Salem's Lot

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If there's one guy who knows where the bodies are buried about his fellow owners ...
NFL owners want this to go away as soon as possible. That’s the last thing they need is a guy with inside information on everyone out there making noise. These are the same guys that gave up their tax exempt status because they didn’t want to open their books.
 

Mystic Merlin

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Kraft isn’t losing control of the team/stepping down unless he wants to.

My impression is that Jonathan runs the show aside from truly meaningful decisions, anyways.
 

ALiveH

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Chinese women and Nigerian men in the news recently - once again proving that immigrants are willing to do jobs that American citizens aren't willing to do.
 

axx

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Some things about how the cops approached the situation don't seem right to me. By several accounts in this thread, the parlor is in a fairly affluent area where many retired notables stay. If you're going to do a bust on a place like that, why not just do a small sting op and shut the place down?
There's more than one parlor involved in this investigation. And what has the Feds interested is the human trafficking aspect and not the prostitution.
 

nolasoxfan

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NFL owners want this to go away as soon as possible. That’s the last thing they need is a guy with inside information on everyone out there making noise. These are the same guys that gave up their tax exempt status because they didn’t want to open their books.
Trump’s revenge on a clique that wouldn’t let him in?
Ok, I’ll remove my tin foil hat now. Would make a hell of a screenplay, though.
 

DegenerateSoxFan

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It’s been at least 4 minutes...what’s taking so long?

Looking at a human being who has been trafficked and is essentially being held against her will and participating in forcing that person to perform sex acts on you is different than looking at a bud or a line and smoking/snorting it.
Human beings should not be considered ‘commodities, nothing more nothing less.’
Don’t jump through mental hoops to try to convince yourself otherwise.
I think it's a matter of degree, but raises a question as to the human element that increases the degree of harm as a feature of the business itself in a way that that perhaps the "adventure-minded" man should be a bit more cognizant of the supply-chain realities. If you partake of certain goods and services, both legal and illegal, you may be supporting businesses that by their very nature inflict death and misery to varying degrees. We all have our own tolerance levels for what we'll overlook. But it does leave open the issue of moral culpability of those purchasing the services alleged to have been bought by Kraft. As someone pointed out upthread, from what they knew from law enforcement contacts, not all of these rub & tugs are employing women being held against their will and being forced to perform sex acts. And from what I know from my former criminal law practice and law enforcement contacts, there are plenty of these women who (mostly) aren't crazy about being in the industry, but tolerate it because under the right circumstances, the money can be very good.

I'm not inclined to emulate not-so-Krafty Bob, but if I was, I'd avoid these places only because I think the risk is too high that they'd have women working there under dire circumstances. I get that there's a certain thrill to doing something seedy even if you can afford better (um, not that I'd ever know from another lifetime or anything), but given what we know now, I just wouldn't. The kind of hookers Kraft can afford are not being held against their will and are absolutely doing it voluntarily for a LOT of money.

Should Bob have known that by patronizing a business like a local rub & tug, he might be supporting human trafficking? And if he had a clue that this has been an issue in many of these places, is that "might" strong enough to condemn him and to what degree? I don't know the answer to that question. Shit, it was only after I learned about how the cartels do business when I was a defense lawyer in Arizona that I felt bad about having smoked Mexican brickweed in college. It was cheap and did the job, but it was produced and trafficked by people who, if they had a problem (or even thought they had a problem) with someone, wouldn't think twice about killing them and their entire family down in Mexico. Interestingly, the marijuana legalization movement in the U.S. has pretty much pushed the cartels out of what was a bimodal weed market (Bricked-up Mexican vs. the much higher-quality stuff grown domestically). Which is great - all that's available here now is 10x better and not produced by violent gangsters. Of course these organizations are adaptable and they've concentrated their efforts on opiates (heroin, as they had the peasants in the golden triangle area of Sinaloa switch from weed to poppies, and fetanyl) and yup, you guessed it - human trafficking.

As someone else pointed out, maybe it's a good thing that having someone famous get caught will shed and keep some light on what's always been a problem. That said, it raises some interesting questions about moral culpability and what we ought to know about the likelihood that what we're buying is directly or indirectly contributing to some really bad things being perpetrated.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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There's more than one parlor involved in this investigation. And what has the Feds interested is the human trafficking aspect and not the prostitution.
This. From this Bloomberg piece (which incidentally names
two other prominent financiers, including John Havens, Citigroup Inc.’s former president. John Childs, a buyout pioneer - so there are other notable names here if not as "big" as Kraft):

“These women are being treated like cattle,” {Martin County Sheriff} Snyder said. He said of the arrested men: “Any thoughts that they didn’t know they were trafficked women were hogwash.”
Some of the jokes/memes/headines are funny and I get the conspiracy angles given the stakes as well as the team's history with the league. Furthermore, there is no question that the authorities naming names, especially famous people like Kraft, serves several ends.

However the key take away here is that women were allegedly being held against their will and coerced into acts that they would not have consented to otherwise. As much as I am appreciative of what Kraft has done for the Patriots, the consequences he suffers are of little interest to me against the backdrop of the suffering of people who have nowhere near his means or voice.

Bob Kraft and the New England Patriots will be ok or maybe they won't. The bigger concern is the wellbeing of the women involved here and the other victims of trafficking schemes.
 

snowmanny

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This. From this Bloomberg piece (which incidentally names
two other prominent financiers, including John Havens, Citigroup Inc.’s former president. John Childs, a buyout pioneer - so there are other notable names here if not as "big" as Kraft):



Some of the jokes/memes/headines are funny and I get the conspiracy angles given the stakes as well as the team's history with the league. Furthermore, there is no question that the authorities naming names, especially famous people like Kraft, serves several ends.

However the key take away here is that women were allegedly being held against their will and coerced into acts that they would not have consented to otherwise. As much as I am appreciative of what Kraft has done for the Patriots, the consequences he suffers are of little interest to me against the backdrop of the suffering of people who have nowhere near his means or voice.

Bob Kraft and the New England Patriots will be ok or maybe they won't. The bigger concern is the wellbeing of the women involved here and the other victims of trafficking schemes.
Your last sentence is very true. And Kraft deserves whatever he gets for being stupid. But prosecuting random prostitutes and their random clients isn’t exactly the cure for human trafficking. There are ways to shut down places like this and go after the traffickers without Richard Palmer’s name in the paper. I get what you’re saying about the publicity helping the cause but in actuality turn on Satellite radio and you’ll find that practically nobody is talking about how to use this to stop human trafficking. AFAI can tell all of America is only interested in leveraging this event into somehow stopping the inhumanity of the Patriots winning every other Super Bowl.

Ed: I guess I’m unconvinced everyone knew these women were “trafficked”.
Perhaps that’s a gap in my knowledge base, but it wouldn’t have been obvious to me.
 

ALiveH

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I imagine there is obvious human trafficking-involved prostitution (women held against will) and obvious willing prostitution (women who want to make some extra bucks), and lots of grey areas in between.

For example, if a woman has some combination of the following circumstances: overstays her visa, has no way to get back to her home country, lacks even basic language skills to make money at a real job, is a single mom, drug addiction - she might feel like she is doing it against her will even though it is a direct result of previous bad luck / life decisions. If a massage parlor owner takes advantage of her situation by having her work in less-than-ideal conditions (or lets her live rent-free in the parlor) it can look a lot like human trafficking. I don't know how a john who is in and out in 30 minutes and may not even notice they live there is supposed to be able to figure it out on their own. That being said, i'd guess that most johns probably have it in the back of their mind that there is a possibility they are supporting trafficking.

As always, help the real victims (green cards / basic skills training), cut off the heads of the serpents (organized crime), and legalize it.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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One of my first thoughts when I learned the details was, "Wow, Jonathan must really have gotten tired of being #2." Now obviously it's pretty unlikely that Jonathan would do such a thing, but I think it's at least entertainable that someone caught up in the sting was targeted for embarassment, maybe Kraft or one of the several other high profile hand-jobbees.

Some things about how the cops approached the situation don't seem right to me. By several accounts in this thread, the parlor is in a fairly affluent area where many retired notables stay. If you're going to do a bust on a place like that, why not just do a small sting op and shut the place down? Why do a public name and shame with video? I'm not too familiar with LE principles in play here, but this doesn't seem like a common practice.

Maybe my brain is tingling under my tinfoil hat due to my own experiences with the local law enforcement and judicial community here, where they tend to handle everything very discreetly.

*Edit:* Continuing with this line of thinking, why don't we see more of these cases in the news? There are many neighborhoods in the country where if you pick a random massage parlor and set up a similar sting, you'd probably pull up a few familiar faces each time. Why here, why now?
They are in the news and these places exist in most medium to large cities (ever been to Myrtle Beach?) but they aren’t going to make national news and this wouldn’t have if Kraft hadn’t been on the list. Unfortunately it’s a headline because of his name rather than being about the trafficking part. TMZ is why here, why now. Say all you want about them but they find shit.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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Ed: I guess I’m unconvinced everyone knew these women were “trafficked”.
Perhaps that’s a gap in my knowledge base, but it wouldn’t have been obvious to me.
I That being said, i'd guess that most johns probably have it in the back of their mind that there is a possibility they are supporting trafficking.
I agree with you snowmanny that the main take away from this story is that the hated Patriots organization is behind something unsavory again and that they need to be punished for it.

That said, while I think you are both on to something in that it probably didn't cross many or perhaps all of the "clients" minds that these women may be doing this work as a result of coercion. But that is kind of willful ignorance imho.

Its uncomfortable but until or unless people consider all of the externalities of their existence - and we have seen a more thoughtful approach, if not a lot of results, when it comes to the food supply chain as a result of people being more educated on the sources/nature of the ingredients they consume - we aren't going to get market changes that, at least, limits the number potential victims.

Getting everyone to consider the origins/processes around the goods and services they consume is a tall order. However even changing a few people's behaviors to avoid an establishment like the parlors in this story is progress.
 

Montana Fan

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Exactly. Trafficking of girls from China to work in massage palors has been a problem for a long time, and this is the first time the average middle class white American gave a fuck about it. It was always joked about in movies and other media. Now all of this faux outrage because it happens to involve the owner of the most hated team in the history of sports might actually move the needle of public consciousness and actually get some of these places shut down for good. The FBI is doing its job.
What’s your point? That middle class black and Hispanic folks already were enlightened on the issue or that they mean so little in your estimation that you don’t give a fuck whether they care or not?
 

simplyeric

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What about from the POV of the trafficker/supplier? That may have been nola's point.
Ok I can understand that position, but I was following an exchange back to this post, which i took as being about the end consumer and not the middle-men.
Yes, and everyone who smoked pot or did a line or two in college in the 80s and 90s should be held responsible for the drug war deaths in Columbia and Mexico.
So yeah, I think you can smoke a bowl and not be confronted with the supply issues that got it to you. I think it’s a different thing to look at a human being who’s about to perform a sex act on you and have it not cross your mind. To the consumer, a human being should register differently than an inert object/material.
You’re absolutely right, they shouldn’t be, but they are. Thinking otherwise is burying your head in the sand.
I think we’re talking about different things.
I can only imagine basically every single NFL owner pushing as hard as possible to push Bob out to help de-stabilize the Pats.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least, even in spite of the fact that most/all of them have their own skeletons. I don’t know if they’re smart enough to understand that what comes around goes around.
 

Marciano490

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This drugs versus sex tangent is stupid. When you have sex with a trafficked prostitute you’re directly harming the victim. When I buy drugs I’m not lighting a tire around anyone’s neck.
 

axx

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That said, while I think you are both on to something in that it probably didn't cross many or perhaps all of the "clients" minds that these women may be doing this work as a result of coercion. But that is kind of willful ignorance imho.
I'm skeptical. Maybe they would have thought some of the workers were here illegally but nothing about trafficking. Even the makeshift living quarters wouldn't bat an eye.
 

Myt1

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What’s your point? That middle class black and Hispanic folks already were enlightened on the issue or that they mean so little in your estimation that you don’t give a fuck whether they care or not?
That nothing happens unless white people care about the issue.
 

BornToRun

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You know, I was looking forward to an offseason of thinking about roster additions/subtractions and enjoying another championship.

Instead, we have a 12 page and counting thread on what our team’s owner does with his dick.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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Nevermind. Obviously over your head.
Uh, I don’t think it’s over his head, I think you’re oversimplifying it. It’s a serious problem. Yes. It’s been attempted to be cracked down (and has some in certain areas or situations), but this isn’t the first time the public has cared and I’d argue that that’s not even the ‘story’ here. It’s a high profile story because* of Kraft, but these stings happen. And it’s not in the news in this occasion because of the trafficking. I’d also ask which tv or movie shows ‘joke’ about it?

You are correct that the LEOs involved did their job. But I think you’re missing Montana’s point.
 

simplyeric

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You know, I was looking forward to an offseason of thinking about roster additions/subtractions and enjoying another championship.

Instead, we have a 12 page and counting thread on what our team’s owner does with his dick.
Don’t those two paragraphs sorta mean the same thing?