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September 16, 2010
Brian Lockhart, the Hearst reporter who yesterday broke the story of a Connecticut state government investigation of World Wrestling Entertainment independent contractor classifications, has followed up with a fascinating new blog post that raises a couple of important unanswered questions.
See “Why won’t WWE provide two important details about state audit?”, http://blog.ctnews.com/politicalcapitol/2010/09/15/why-wont-wwe-provide-two-important-details-about-state-audit/.
It was WWE, not the state, that revealed the existence of the audit. Indeed, we still don’t even know what agency is conducting the probe; the company refuses to clarify and the government, as a matter of policy, won’t comment on an ongoing investigation.
The second unanswered question is the date of the audit’s launch. Lockhart suggests that it might even predate the Linda McMahon Senate campaign, and that this leak was designed to link an investigation of her company with innuendo that it is a political abuse of office by her Senate election opponent, attorney general Richard Blumenthal.
The only small piece of intelligence I can add is that when Blumenthal was on Face the State several months ago, Dennis House asked him if he had ever investigated WWE. Blumenthal replied that he couldn’t comment on any such work by his office. At the time that just sounded generically coy, but the story of WWE and alleged independent contractor abuse has given everything said by everybody on this subject a possible new meaning.
Irv Muchnick