Court Rules Former Lawyer for Vince McMahon Wrongfully Withheld Documents from Federal Grand Jury Investigation

The AP News reported that a Federal Appeals Court ruled on Monday that a former lawyer for Vince McMahon had wrongfully “withhold some documents from a federal grand jury” during its investigation into how McMahon had handled settlements with women who had accused him of sexual abuse.

It was reported that the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in New York had ruled in favor of a lower court ruling that stated the documents were not protected by attorney-client privileged because of an exception for “crime or fraud.”

The court reportedly also stated that the lower court judge found that prosecutors had reasonable grounds to believe that McMahon and his lawyer had illegally circumvented WWE’s internal controls and “created false records when they concealed the employees’ claims and settlement agreements from the company, and that they made false and misleading statements to the company’s auditors — even though McMahon paid the settlements with funds that did not come from the company.”

In the ruling, the presiding judge wrote:

“Because the settlement agreements resolving the Victims’ claims were ‘structured and negotiated … to keep them hidden from (the Company),’ the district court found that ’all communications about the claims and settlement agreements were made in furtherance of the criminal scheme to keep (the Company) and its auditors unaware of the allegations.”

In regards to the documents in dispute, it was reported that McMahon’s lawyer had “submitted a log of 208 documents that were being withheld under assertions of attorney-client privilege.”

When asked for comments, it was reported that the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan had declined to comment when asked about the investigation. It was reported that the current status of the grand jury investigation is currently not known.

It was also reported that while McMahon has previously suggested that he was no longer under an investigation, the court’s ruling implies that opposite and the criminal case against McMahon has not ended.