During Greg Hardy's reinstatement hearing with the NFL in March, Hardy's attorney, Frank Maister, blamed Hardy's ex-girlfriend Nicole Holder for last year's domestic incident.
A transcript of the confidential meeting, which was obtained by Deadspin, reveals Maister calling into question the sexual history of Holder and saying she instigated the fight between Holder and Hardy while he was still a member of the Panthers.
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Hardy was convicted of domestic assault last summer during a bench trial, but had the conviction thrown out following an appeal for a jury trial that never took place after Holder failed to cooperate with authorities after she and Hardy settled outside of court.
Hardy spent most of the 2014 NFL season on the commissioner's exempt list and signed with the Cowboys two weeks after his reinstatement hearing.
At the reinstatement hearing, Maister said the judge at the bench trial was biased against Hardy, who was initially given a 10-game suspension for violating the league's personal conduct policy, but that was reduced to four games following an appeal.
Not only did Maister blame Holder for starting the fight, he claims her injuries were from tripping over a bathroom scale and falling into the bathtub. Photos of Holder's injuries surfaced last week and showed that Holder had bruises on the entirety of her body.
Holder's initial testimony told a completely different story.
"I tried to get up, he pushed me," she told police on May 13, 2014, after the incident with Hardy. "Then I start fighting back, he threw me into the bathroom, I hit the back of the shower wall and fell into the bathtub where he pulled me out … dragged me into the bedroom, picked me up again, threw me down on his futon that had guns sitting on it so I landed on the guns, which is why my back looks the way that it does … and then I fell from there onto the floor where he stood above me and strangled with two hands."
Holder told police Hardy said he would kill her and only stopped when she told him to do it. But Maister said Hardy was the victim and that Holder was "punching, kicking, scratching, hitting" Hardy as he tried to pull her out of the bathroom because he was "worried she’s going to kill herself in his apartment."
Holder eventually fled the apartment building, running by police in the process. Maister painted that scenario as one of guilt because Holder saw the police and still ran away, only stopping after they called to her three times.
"It's a truism the law allows you to make an inference that flight from the police is a conciousness of guilt," he told NFL officials before adding that Hardy was the one who called 911.
Maister also said Holder would become irate if Hardy rebuffed her sexual advances. Maister and Hardy both claimed Holder later "begged" to reconcile and offered to perform oral sex. Maister and Hardy also inferred that Holder was only using Hardy for money to buy “Versace dresses and the Gucci shoes" along with paying her rent "and everything else."
Despite all of the claims made by Hardy's attorney, he did not present Holder's full medical records detailing the extent of her injuries.
NFL Hearing Transcript (via Deadspin)