EDEN PRAIRIE, MN – The Minnesota Vikings responded today to a nasty feud that has been simmering all year between the football team and their former punter, Chris Kluwe. Earlier this year, Kluwe released a scathing letter with allegations of bigotry and a hostile work environment which drew reactions from a coach and the Viking organization itself and has lead both sides to “lawyer-up”.
Kluwe, a former Vikings punter, had spoken out in favor of equality in marriage in 2012 and then was later cut from the team, said in a post published in January on Deadspin.com that after he began to speak out as a private citizen against a proposed amendment to the Minnesota constitution that would make marriage legal only between a man and a woman, he was subjected to what amounted to a hostile work environment. He wrote that former coach Leslie Frazier – who has since been fired – tried to make him stop speaking out on the subject, to stay away from the media, and that Frazier tried to remove him from the team until owner Zigi Wilf got involved.
Kluwe also wrote that a coach on the team, Mike Priefer, made vulgar remarks about gays.
“Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible,” Kluwe alleged.
On another occasion, Kluwe said that “Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: ‘We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.’”
In a statement released today, July 15, 2014, the Vikings said that since Chris Kluwe’s allegations first appeared in Deadspin on January 2, 2014, the Minnesota Vikings have taken them very seriously, which is why the team immediately retained former Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court Eric Magnuson and former U.S. Department of Justice Trial Attorney Chris Madel, two partners of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, L.L.P. (RKMC), to perform an independent review of these allegations. Magnuson and Madel were asked to thoroughly and comprehensively investigate three particular allegations by Kluwe and Kluwe’s counsel:
1) Special Teams Coordinator Mike Priefer made offensive and insensitive remarks in Kluwe’s presence.
2) Representatives of the Vikings had knowledge of these comments prior to the Deadspin article publication on January 2, 2014.
3) Kluwe’s activism was the reason for his release from the Vikings on May 6, 2013.
Magnuson, Madel and others spent nearly six months conducting an exhaustive investigation.
After the Vikings were given the investigative materials from Magnuson and Madel, in order to further maintain objectivity and integrity, the team engaged a nationally-prominent law firm – Littler Mendelson P.C. – to evaluate employment law matters and provide findings and recommendations to the Vikings. Those recommendations are to be provided to the team this week.
As Magnuson and Madel confirmed today, the Vikings have never made or broken promises as Kluwe and his attorney Clayton Halunen have claimed. The Vikings have also never engaged in the various comments that Kluwe and Halunen have provided to the media over the past six months. This Thursday, July 17, the team has a meeting scheduled between Halunen and Vikings attorneys to discuss next steps.
As we have consistently communicated throughout this process, the Vikings will have further comment when the investigation is entirely complete and the team has made determinations on next steps.
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