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Kluwe petitions Vikings to release report

MINNEAPOLIS -- Former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe plans to file suit against the team this week, in part to obtain the full report from a six-month independent investigation of his allegations against special teams coordinator Mike Priefer. But Kluwe is employing another tool to pressure the Vikings to release the report.

He started a petition on Change.org, asking the Vikings to release the full 150-page report to the public. The team engaged another law firm to review the full report last week and released a 29-page summary of the investigation on Friday evening. In an interview on Saturday, however, Kluwe said the report contained inaccuracies about Priefer's conduct and called again for the Vikings to release the complete report. As of Monday afternoon, his petition had received about 900 digital signatures.

Kluwe's attorney, Clayton Halunen, said on Saturday that he would start the discovery process the same day he serves the Vikings with a lawsuit. Of the report, he said, "We're going to get that within 30 days (of a lawsuit being filed)."

In the explanation of the petition he wrote on Change.org, Kluwe said the Vikings had promised to release the findings from their six-month investigation, and he called a news conference last Tuesday to criticize the team after it informed him it would not release the complete report. Both the Vikings and investigators Chris Madel and Eric Magnuson released statements the same day saying the team had never made or broken any promises to Kluwe about what it planned to do with the report.