NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick's arbitration case against league owners who allegedly colluded against him for his on-field protests of police brutality is proceeding apace, and new word from Kaepernick's legal team indicates they intend to subpoena a pair of big names to back up their charge that those owners blackballed him from league play due to political pressure: Donald Trump and Mike Pence themselves.
The aim will be a dive into the administration’s political involvement with the NFL during Kaepernick’s free agency and the league’s handling of player protests, sources said. This after recent disclosures that multiple owners had direct talks with Trump about players kneeling during the national anthem.
The argument that Trump and Pence were involved in pressuring owners to curtail protests and punish participating players seems airtight: Pence, you may recall, went so far as to jet off to an Indianapolis Colts game during the height of the protests, only to (upon Trump's specific order, according to Trump himself) immediately leave the stadium in counter-protest because players kneeled during the anthem. It was a very expensive, very public, very official and very stupid stunt orchestrated specifically to target the protesters; subsequently revealed conversations between Trump and team owners indicate that Trump continued to pressure the owners directly over the protests in private, as well as in public.
What Kaepernick's team seeks to prove is that NFL owners collaborated to end his career due to this pressure, with no team being willing to hire him despite his stellar league achievements specifically because of his public protests.
Though the courts have in the past ruled that even presidents can be compelled to give testimony, whether Trump and Mini-Trump will agree to do it, subpoena or not, is an open question. Even if a federal court ordered it, the odds are high that they would tell the court to pound sand and be done with it. But Kaepernick's lawyers have plenty of evidence of Trump's involvement from the statements of owners themselves, so either way, the administration will feature prominently in the upcoming battle. Won’t that be fun.