He ousted executives accused of wrongdoing, employed Jason Wright as the primary Black staff president in NFL historical past and put in a brand new administration hierarchy that was markedly extra numerous than his earlier management regimes as a part of what the staff — and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in current testimony earlier than Congress — referred to as an organizational transformation.
Documents launched June 22 by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, nonetheless, inform a distinct story. According to sworn depositions of two former staff executives whose tenures lined a 17-year span, and extra testimony from one other, Snyder didn’t merely preside over an group by which poisonous conduct was rampant; fairly, he was an energetic participant, modeling abusive conduct that his prime deputies typically mimicked, making a office that was corrosive to male executives, a few of whom later regretted their actions, as effectively as younger girls.
“Mr. Snyder himself fostered the Commanders’ toxic workplace,” Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee’s chairwoman, mentioned on the outset of a June 22 listening to, summarizing the committee’s findings.
The proof for Maloney’s assertion was specified by 750 pages of sworn depositions and transcribed interviews with three former staff executives and a former cheerleaders captain, which the committee launched along side its public listening to to query Snyder and Goodell about its preliminary findings. The paperwork embody accounts of being ridiculed and demeaned by Snyder, watching different executives do the identical to lower-level workers, witnessing the harassment of feminine workers who “were treated like a piece of meat,” as one mentioned, and being requested to lie and interact in unethical conduct as a part of their jobs.
Snyder declined to participate within the listening to; Goodell participated remotely.
Offered the chance to answer the precise allegations specified by the committee’s supplies, a spokesperson for Snyder issued the next assertion: “Despite Mr. Snyder’s continued apologies and regret for the historical problems that arose at the team, The Washington Post goes out of its way to assail his character and ignore the successful efforts by both Dan and Tanya Snyder, together with Jason Wright and Coach Ron Rivera, for over the past two years to bring about a remarkable transformation to the organization. The Snyders will continue to focus on their league-leading fight to bring greater respect and much-needed diversity and equality to the workplace in the face of constant and baseless attacks from the media and elsewhere.”
The committee additionally present in its eight-month investigation that regardless of professing full cooperation with the NFL-sponsored probe led by lawyer Beth Wilkinson starting in July 2020, Snyder waged a “shadow campaign” by means of legal professionals and personal investigators to undermine her work, discredit former workers and suspected accusers, and shift blame for his position within the staff’s poisonous tradition.
In sworn testimony earlier than the committee, Goodell told lawmakers that the league’s investigation had confirmed that the Washington staff’s office for years was “unprofessional and unacceptable in numerous respects: bullying, widespread disrespect toward colleagues, use of demeaning language, public embarrassment, and harassment.”
But Goodell attested to the staff’s transformation of tradition and management since.
“The most recent independent workplace report, which we have shared with the Committee, confirms that an entirely new, highly skilled, and diverse management team is in place and that there has been a ‘substantial transformation of [the team’s] culture, leadership and Human resources practices,” Goodell acknowledged. “To be clear, the workplace at the Commanders today bears no resemblance to the workplace that has been described to this committee.”
The NFL declined additional remark.
Snyder has remained at odds with committee members since they launched their investigation in October 2021 and continued this 12 months. During that span, Snyder has not supplied paperwork requested by the committee and has but to just accept service of a congressional subpoena after refusing an invitation to testify at its June 22 listening to.
During his deposition June 7, which lasted greater than six hours, Dave Pauken, the staff’s chief working officer from 2001 to 2006, likened the workplaces dynamic to “an abusive relationship” and positioned Snyder on the coronary heart of it.
“The culture was how Dan wanted the culture at the time,” mentioned Pauken, who testified underneath oath after being subpoenaed by the panel. “ … I think that in the end, it all stems from the owner, Dan Snyder.”
Asked about Snyder’s assertion that he had merely been too “hands off,” Pauken described him fairly as an proprietor steeped in each element of the group.
“My reaction was that that is not a true statement,” Pauken mentioned. Asked to elaborate, he mentioned: “I have no experience with him, nor do any of my colleagues, where he was hands off.”
Pauken labored as an government for practically a decade at two of Snyder’s corporations, Snyder Communications (1996-2000) and the NFL staff (2001-06). Asked to explain Snyder as a businessman based mostly on that have, Pauken praised his acumen whereas taking concern along with his type.
“He is a visionary. He is very smart. He understands how to create value. And there’s a lot to be learned from him,” Pauken mentioned. “On the other hand, I find him to be overly aggressive, abusive, and demeaning to those that are around him.”
On a couple of event, Pauken mentioned, Snyder summoned him to proprietor’s field overlooking FedEx Field earlier than kickoff, the place the proprietor and a good friend would watch the cheerleaders’ pregame observe.
“He would say to his friend, hey, do you think Dave is gay?” Pauken testified. “And his friend would say, ‘Yeah, he must be gay.’ And Dan would say, ‘Yeah, he has to be gay, as ugly as these cheerleaders are. Pauken, are you gay? You must be gay. How could you have a cheerleading squad that looked like this?’”
Pauken recounted an occasion when Snyder referred to as him and a fellow government into his workplace to tell them he had employed Mitch Gershman to take over their position overseeing premium-seat gross sales, stating that Gershman “had more sales and marketing knowledge in his left testicle than” the 2 of them had of their total our bodies.
“Those are Dan’s words,” Pauken testified. “Verbatim.”
Pauken mentioned that when he took ethical stands throughout front-office conferences — such as advocating for much less risque outfits and choreography for the staff’s cheerleaders — Snyder typically mocked him in entrance of his friends.
“He would call me Mr. Goody Two Shoes,” Pauken testified. “Or he would say to another executive, or friend or somebody that I don’t like girls. I’m Mr. Goody Two Shoes. … That was just part of what it was like being in an abusive relationship.”
Pauken mentioned he regretted many issues he did at Snyder’s behest throughout his employment, such as not difficult the proprietor’s insistence on firing feminine workers for consensual, in-office sexual relationships however not sanctioning the male executives or gamers concerned.
Chief amongst his regrets, he mentioned, was complying with a directive from Snyder geared toward Mark Lerner, an actual property magnate who later grew to become proprietor of the Washington Nationals. Snyder had bought from Lerner a parcel of land close to FedEx Field for added parking and, based on Pauken’s testimony, subsequently determined he had paid an excessive amount of. So, Pauken told the committee, Snyder instructed him to pour milk on the carpet underneath the seating in Mark Lerner’s suite at FedEx Field so it might scent rancid all through the following recreation.
Jason Friedman, a advertising government whose 24-year profession with the staff spanned the Cooke household possession and that of Snyder, told the committee that when Snyder took over, “the focus changed from one of quality to one of quantity” and “the culture of the company sort of glorified drinking and womanizing.”
Friedman spoke to the committee voluntarily after first sending the panel a letter to buttress the allegation that former cheerleader and advertising government Tiffani Johnston leveled in opposition to Snyder throughout a Feb. 3 public roundtable with committee members on Capitol Hill. Johnston told the committee she was seated beside Snyder throughout a enterprise dinner and needed to take away his hand from her thigh underneath the desk. Afterward, she mentioned, Snyder put his hand on her again and tried to steer her into his ready limousine. Snyder publicly denounced Johnston’s allegations on the time as “outright lies.”
Friedman mentioned staff workers have been afraid of getting fired “because they had seen so many others lose their jobs.”
According to Friedman, in one among his first days as proprietor, Snyder despatched out a memo to the group a couple of assembly on the stadium late within the day. Employee firings began that morning, and by the beginning of the assembly later within the day, 75 p.c of the workers had been let go, Friedman testified. The ones that made the minimize, made it to the assembly.
“So there was sort of a message sent to the rest of us that, you know, you’re deemed to be worthy of working for the new owner, march on,” Friedman mentioned.
Like Pauken, Brian Lafemina, a former chief working officer and president of enterprise operations, was subpoenaed by the committee, and thus legally required to testify underneath oath.
During questioning on April 8, Lafemina associated an anecdote that undercut Snyder’s declare that he had been unaware of office misconduct and took swift motion as soon as knowledgeable. Lafemina testified that, in a 2018 dialog, he knowledgeable Snyder a couple of feminine worker’s credible criticism about misconduct by play-by-play announcer Larry Michael.
Snyder “said that Larry was a sweetheart, and that Larry wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Lafemina testified. “ … it was obvious that he was fond of Larry and that he thought that Larry was well intentioned and that he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Larry.”
In July 2020, roughly two years after that dialog, Michael abruptly retired on the eve of a Washington Post report that included the previous advertising government’s account of his repeated unwelcome overtures. Michael declined to remark Friday.
Abigail Dymond Welch, an eight-year veteran and former captain of the staff’s cheerleading squad, told the committee of occasions that befell within the months after the office allegations surfaced publicly and the staff had undertaken its front-office overhaul. Welch mentioned a personal investigator who mentioned he “worked on behalf of the Washington Redskins” appeared at her Texas dwelling in April and May 2021 to ask about “interactions” with Bruce Allen and the sexual misconduct investigation into the staff.
Those visits occurred seven months after Debra Katz, an lawyer for a former staff worker, mentioned in a courtroom listening to that the NFL had told Snyder to “back off” in his use of personal investigators.
Welch told the committee that she knew of “maybe five” different former cheerleaders who had additionally been visited at dwelling by non-public investigators in search of comparable information.