National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell "should go if he lied" about when the league saw a videotape of Ray Rice knocking his then-fiancee unconscious, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.
"If Roger Goodell lied, as a lot of people believe he did, because the security apparatus of the NFL is so competent and well experienced that for them to not have known about this tape seems incredible, he should go," Blumenthal said on ABC's "This Week."
The Connecticut Democrat was one of three senators who criticized the NFL's handling of the case during appearances on U.S. talk shows Sunday. Rice, the Baltimore Ravens' top running back, was released by the team Sept. 8 and suspended indefinitely by the NFL after the video from inside a New Jersey casino elevator was posted on the website TMZ.
Rice originally was suspended two games by Goodell, who said the day the player was released that no one at the NFL saw the video of the punch until last week.
Two days later, Goodell hired former FBI Director Robert Mueller to examine the league's handling of the case, after the Associated Press reported that a law-enforcement official sent a copy of the video to the NFL in April.
"I think the way the NFL handled this was awful. It was outrageous," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, one of 16 female senators who wrote to Goodell last week calling on the NFL to institute tougher penalties for players who commit domestic violence.
‘Fired Immediately'
"They had all the facts they needed," Gillibrand, a Democrat, said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "They had a player who admitted to beating his wife. They had video of him dragging her out an elevator. There was nothing left to determine. That player should have been fired immediately."
Rice, 27, married fiancee Janay Palmer, 26, in March, before his first NFL suspension. They have a 2-year-old daughter.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, also a Democrat, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that the NFL should have considered giving Rice a temporary suspension while it gathered facts about the case.
"But the fact that they gave only a two-game suspension, and then turn around and after the evidence goes public say, ‘Oh, oh, we made a mistake, now we're going to let him go,' I think that's problematic for the NFL and it's deeply concerning about how they handle these kinds of cases," Klobuchar said.
"The fact that the NFL puts out their players as role models, which they are for so many young men, they can make a real difference here by putting in place tougher policies, by changing the culture within the NFL."
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