Crisis communications: emails show Saints & Pelicans helped New Orleans church spin abuse scandal [Goodell says NFL isn’t concerned]

Doug B said
The Guardian article linked in the OP, muckraking as it it, is actually worth the read. Just to know what's being accused. At its heart:

"Yet what remained hidden until now are more than 300 emails, amounting to more than 700 pages, many emblazoned with the NFL and NBA logos, showing that the teams’ officials were more involved with some of the church’s operations than they ever admitted. They expose how extensively the sports teams’ leaders intervened in their local church’s most unyielding scandal.

"In the most blatant example of that, Bensel – the teams’ vice-president for communications – wrote an email to Lauscha on 1 November 2018, the day before the clergy-abuse list was released. Using common abbreviations for “conference call” and “with”, Bensel wrote: “Had a cc w [New Orleans’ then district attorney] Leon Cannizzaro last night that allowed us to take certain people off the list.”

If Bensel did lobby to have names taken off the list, it's disgusting and he should be fired. But, the quote you have above from the email referenced in the article isn't clear to me. The quote is:

“Had a cc w [New Orleans’ then district attorney] Leon Cannizzaro last night that allowed us to take certain people off the list.”

I can see how someone could interpret that as Bensel suggesting names be taken off of the list, but IIRC, it was the Archdiocese that released the list so to me it sounds like Bensel got info from Cannizzaro that indicates that some of the list had not committed crimes and he suggested that those names be taken off of the list. I don't think Bensel should be involved in this in his professional capacity with the Saints, but as disgusting as I find it, he can do it as a private citizen. Moreover, it's not the same as lobbying the DA to no prosecute some abusers.

All of the articles appears to be giant articles with little new information that were timed for release to get the most attention possible when the vast majority of what is in the articles was know year ago and the little new information is really subject to interpretation and isn't the smoking gun it is portrayed to be.