According to the final report released Thursday from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder “permitted and participated” in the team’s toxic workplace culture.
The Oversight Committee began its investigation in Oct. 2021 by conducting numerous interviews, depositions and a roundtable with former team employees. A hearing with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was held over the summer, where he testified.
According to the report, Snyder testified before the committee on July 28 and gave testimony “that was often evasive or misleading.”
“We saw efforts that we have never seen before, at least I haven’t,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, per Tisha Thompson of ESPN. “The NFL knew about it, and they took no responsibility.”
In discussing Beth Wilkinson’s report, Maloney said the following:
“Then they turn around and fix it so she can’t talk,” Maloney said, referring to Wilkinson. “Her report is never going to be made public, yet she was supposed to be hired to address it. The hypocrisy. The coordinated effort to hide what they acknowledged.”
The report also alleges that “dozens of employees at the Commanders were harmed by a toxic work culture for more than two decades. The Team’s owner permitted and participated in this troubling conduct.”
The Commanders, through attorneys John Brownlee and Stuart Nash, offered the following statement after the report’s release:
These Congressional investigators demonstrated, almost immediately, that they were not interested in the truth, and were only interested in chasing headlines by pursuing one side of the story. Today’s report is the predictable culmination of that one-sided approach.
There are no new revelations here. The Committee persists in criticizing Mr. Snyder for declining to voluntarily appear at the Committee’s hearing last spring, notwithstanding Mr. Snyder’s agreement to sit, at a date chosen by the Committee, for an unprecedented 11-hours of questioning under oath. The only two members of Congress who witnessed any part of that deposition, one Democrat and one Republican, both made public statements in the wake of the deposition characterizing Mr. Snyder’s answers as truthful, cooperative, and candid. As is typical of the Committee, they have refused, despite our repeated requests to release the full transcript of Mr. Snyder’s deposition.
The Committee suggests that Mr. Snyder prevented witnesses from coming forward yet does not identify a single witness who did not come forward or who suffered a single adverse consequence for having done so.
And, ironically for an “investigative” body, supposedly engaged in an “investigation,” the investigators actually criticize the team and Mr. Snyder for providing evidence to the Committee — such as e-mails former team employees sent from their workplace accounts — that reveal the actual causes of the formerly dysfunctional workplace environment at the team.
Today’s report does not advance public knowledge of the Washington Commanders workplace in any way. The team is proud of the progress it has made in recent years in establishing a welcoming and inclusive workplace, and it looks forward to future success, both on and off the field.
Last month, it was revealed that Snyder hired Bank of America Securities to look into possible transactions with the franchise, which Snyder and his wife, Tanya, acknowledged.
