Update: Jessica McCloughan issued an apology.
This is all breaking pretty fast today, but we have the wife (above) of Redskins GM Scot McCloughan accusing, via tweets this month, that ESPN’s Dianna Russini is his “side chick” and that he might be feeding the new ESPN D.C. reporter with inside information. The following tweets were sent from Jessica McCloughan’s Twitter account – @rutherchevy- (which has been deleted). The side chick tweet comes via a Google cache search.
Black Sports Online has been all over this one from the beginning.
Was she hacked? Seems unlikely.
It was announced in May that Russini would be leaving her job at NBC Washington for a job with ESPN. From the Washington Post on Russini’s quick rise to stardom for breaking NFL news on Twitter:
She also became known for aggressively attempting to break news about the Redskins and the NFL on Twitter, even when the news had little to do with Washington.
“That was a result of building relationships,” she said. “When you have relationships with people and you’re given news, it’s like what are you going to do? I didn’t want to not put it out, and in an era of Twitter it’s almost easier to put it out yourself, so I went for it. And it’s really cool to see on the ESPN scroll, ‘NBC Washington is reporting….’ ”
According to a Redskins.com story, the McCloughan’s weren’t married as of March 24. This is a fresh marriage.
Scot McCloughan spent time in the 49ers organization as GM, but he was fired after a battle with alcohol forced him to visit the Betty Ford clinic and eventually derailed his life.
McCloughan believed he abused alcohol but was not an alcoholic, according to the report. Instead of just drinking beer, McCloughan turned to vodka. He drank it all day out of a Gatorade bottle toward the end of his 49ers tenure.
“It’d take me away from reality,” McCloughan said. “All of a sudden, everything’s gone. Just have peace. Everything that was going on with my wife at the time, everything with the kids, everything with the job, it’s OK. … That was my drug. It was a liquid drug.”
Developing.
Do you know more about the McCloughan/Russini story? We’ll keep you anonymous.
mail@bustedcoverage.com
Redskins SVP of Communications Tony Wyllie responds:
[protected-iframe id=”044cc8a4db6ebee1742341b433bd228d-22577676-23105199″ info=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/222084768″ ]
Only issue here is that this “fake” account he’s talking about was already deleted as of this afternoon. NFL security has no account to close. Also, Mr. Wyllie mentions Ms. McCloughan didn’t send “that tweet.” But there are two tweets making accusations against Scot.
More…
The “fake” account also wished McCloughan’s son a happy birthday in March.
