A day after the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Reform accepted Commanders owner Dan Snyder’s offer to testify July 28, his legal team responded to the committee’s intention to issue a subpoena.
“There is no valid basis to issue a subpoena for Mr. Snyder’s testimony. We intend that he will testify voluntarily on July 28, as he has long agreed and looks forward to the opportunity to do.”
The committee chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter earlier this week that the committee “will proceed with a subpoena in place to ensure that Mr. Snyder’s testimony will be full and complete and will not be restricted in the way it would be if the deposition were conducted voluntarily.” She added, “Mr. Snyder has a troubling history of using [non-disclosure agreements] to cover up workplace misconduct—behavior that is central to our investigation—and it would be highly inappropriate for him to employ the same tactic to withhold information from the Committee.”
Snyder’s attorney, Karen Patton Seymour, wrote that the committee’s justification for the subpoena “is baseless.”
“Mr. Snyder is not subject to any NDA that conditions his ability to share information solely on receipt of a subpoena.”
Seymour also addressed the committee’s allegation that Snyder “previously refused to cooperate,” adding “while Mr. Snyder was already committed to a work engagement overseas on the single date the Committee offered for his appearance, we repeatedly reiterated Mr. Snyder’s willingness to cooperate and offered to find alternate dates for him to appear.”
Here is a link to the attorney’s letter, provided by Front Office Sports.
The committee accused Snyder of refusing to accept service of a subpoena for his testimony last month. Via a spokesperson, Snyder denied he was dodging testimony, and last week, he offered to provide video testimony. Snyder declined to be deposed at a June 22 hearing of the committee, although NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did speak at the hearing.
The committee launched a months-long probe looking into the franchise’s workplace culture, how the league handled misconduct reports and “the NFL’s role in setting and enforcing standards across the League, and legislative reforms needed to address these issues across the NFL and other workplaces.”
The NFL has shared numerous documents with the committee throughout the investigation, such as a Common Interest Agreement between the NFL and the team and an engagement letter between lawyer Beth Wilkinson’s firm and the franchise. (Wilkinson conducted an extensive investigation of the team’s workplace culture.)
However, the findings from Wilkinson’s report haven’t been released. Last fall, multiple women involved in the investigation called Goodell’s statements on the matter false, calling for full transparency from the league. The league commissioner reiterated why he would not be releasing the report during last month’s hearing.
Additionally, the committee penned an explosive letter to the Federal Trade Commission, asserting that the Commanders and Snyder “may have engaged in a troubling, long-running, and potentially unlawful pattern of financial conduct that victimized thousands of team fans and the National Football League.”
Prior to June’s hearing, Rep. Maloney sent committee members a 29-page memo revealing how Snyder not only allegedly used private investigators in his own probe but also “abused the subpoena power of federal courts to obtain private emails, call logs, and communications in an effort to uncover the sources of the Washington Post’s exposés, undermine their credibility, and impugn their motives.” New allegations of how Snyder handled harassment claims against other executives and the kind of workplace culture he allegedly fostered also emerged. The details can be found here.
Snyder also faces other sexual misconduct allegations of his own. For example, the committee held a hybrid roundtable with several former employees of the franchise, and Tiffani Johnston detailed allegations that directly implicated Snyder, who denied them.
“I learned that placing me strategically by the owner at a work dinner after this networking event was not for me to discuss business, but to allow him to place his hand on my thigh under the table,” Johnston said in her opening statement. “I learned how to discreetly remove a man’s unwanted hand from my thigh at a crowded dinner table, at a crowded restaurant to avoid a scene. I learned that job survival meant I should continue my conversation with another co-worker rather than to call out Dan Snyder right then, in the moment.
“I also learned later that evening how to awkwardly laugh while Dan Snyder aggressively pushed me towards his limo with his hand on my lower back, encouraging me to ride with him to my car. I learned how to continue to say no even though a situation was getting more awkward, uncomfortable and physical.”
