Of all things, the argument at the time was that Essendon had "fully cooperated with the investigation". In fact, AD even singled us out at the time by sayingt something along the lines of "unlike the Crows". We contacted them at the time and pointed out that we had literally invited them in to review our email trail (which led to the discovery of the aforementioned emails) and voluntarily gave up our draft picks, whereas Essendon maintained their innocence and fought the AFL the whole way. AD basically said whatever, supposedly offered a private apology but then continued to maintain publicly that Essendon had fully cooperated and we hadn't.
I'm not sure what went on there, to be honest.
Edit: Also, a reminder, their CEO resigned so he could be replaced with someone who's sole purpose for being there was to fight the drug claims.