After news of Ray Rice and Steve Bisciotti came out saying that Bisciotti offered hush money to Rice, the Baltimore Ravens owner felt it right to respond to false allegations and had published what he says are the actual text messages in "verbatim" form.
According to Bisciotti "I did have an exchange of text messages with Ray, which he initiated. I felt awful about what had happened. I believed he was, at heart, a good person, that he was capable of redemption, and I wanted to tell him I would be supportive of him. Here are the texts, not as told to someone and then misquoted in the article, but verbatim."
Those texts, per the Ravens release, read as follows:
Monday September 8, 7:44 pm
Ray: I understand the decision but I am thankful for what you have done for me and my family. Me and my wife will continue to work on us and being better but I just wanted to say thank you for giving me a chance
Steve: I'm sorry we had to do this. I still love you and believe that you will be a great husband and father If you ever need to talk just call
Tuesday September 9, 10:27 pm
Steve: I just spent two hours talking to Ozzie. It was all about you. We love you and we will always figure out a way to keep you in our lives. When you are done with football I will hire you to help me raise Great young men. I still love you!!!
Ray: I know it's a rough time for all of us I love all of you and that will never change for life!
Steve: I will help you make it a great life indeed. I give you my WORD
Ray: That means the world to me and my family we greatly appreciate you and thank you.
He also addresses the issue of him trying to pay off Rice to keep quiet. He said "If I cut a guy making $6 million a year -- if I'm promising him to be by his side and hire him for $100,000 a year five years from now so he can help Harry Swayne in our player development department -- if that is considered worthy of him going along, I find that rather absurd because it would take him 250 years to make back the $25 million that I took away from him by cutting him."
