Commanders owner Dan Snyder, legal team attempted to discredit accusers: House panel

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday released a memo saying Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder and his legal team attempted to discredit workers who had accused the team and ownership of workplace misconduct by conducting a “shadow investigation” amid the NFL’s first investigation into the allegations against the team. 

In a memo sent out to fellow committee members, committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) detailed how Snyder’s legal team used their shadow investigation to create a 100-slide dossier that had emails, text messages, telephone records and social media posts from those who have publicly accused the NFL franchise of harassment. 

Maloney also added that Snyder sent private investigators to the homes of the accusers and gathered thousands of emails from former team President Bruce Allen in an effort to show that Allen, the son of former Commanders coach George Allen, had created the toxic work environment within the franchise. 

Snyder’s legal team also shared the information they gathered to influence attorney Beth Wilkinson’s investigation of the team, the memo said. 

The committee first launched its investigation into the team in October amid the resignation of former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden, whose email chain with Allen, which contained racist, homophobic and misogynistic language and was a part of the league’s initial probe of the team, was leaked to the public. 

Maloney also shared testimonials from former Commanders employees, including former team executive David Pauken, who testified that Snyder refused to take action against a coach who allegedly groped a public relations employee, ordering the female employee to “stay away from the coach.” 

“Well, I had spent, at that point, six years with Dan. I knew the importance of things that were important to him,” Pauken, who was with the Commanders organization from 2001 to 2006, told the committee. “This was a new coach and we weren’t going to disrupt that new coach. And so we were going to make the problem go away as best we could.”

Pauken also shared that Snyder, who purchased the Washington, D.C.-based NFL franchise in 1999, fired a female employee who engaged in consensual relationships with her male colleagues while her male counterparts faced little to no repercussions for consensual relationships in the office. 

A former employee also said that the team had a culture of “glorified drinking and womanizing,” noting that Snyder pressured him to drink excessively and that employees feared for their jobs if they spoke up on the matter. 

Maloney also added that the NFL first asked Snyder to investigate his own team, only to retract that decision after Snyder himself was involved in the sexual harassment claims, the memo added.

This comes as Maloney has introduced a pair of bills last week that seeks to combat the use of nondisclosure agreements and the misuse of professional images in response to her committee’s investigation into the Commanders. 

A group of House Democrats sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a day earlier asking him to release the league’s first investigation findings into the workplace misconduct allegations against the Commanders. 

Goodell plans to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday as it continues to investigate allegations of workplace misconduct against the team and Snyder. Snyder declined the committee’s invitation to testify at the hearing due to a scheduling conflict. 

Rep. James Comer (R-K.Y.) told ESPN on Tuesday that the GOP side of the panel plans to focus on the “woke” aspect of the league with their question to Goodell at the hearing. 

“Our job is to hold the federal government accountable,” Comer said in a tweet. “Focusing on a single private workplace is a waste of taxpayer resources.”