Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder did not make himself available for last week’s House Oversight Committee hearings on the longtime culture of Snyder’s team that was rife with sexual harassment and emotional abuse. Snyder has said that he was too “hands off” in his operation of the team, and predictably, has sworn to do better.
Several former team employees said in sworn depositions that Snyder was not only aware of the team’s culture, but that he actively participated in it.
“Mr. Snyder himself fostered the Commanders’ toxic workplace,” Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee’s chairwoman, said at the outset of a June 22 hearing, summarizing the committee’s findings.
The evidence for Maloney’s assertion was laid out in 750 pages of sworn depositions and transcribed interviews with three former team executives and a former cheerleaders captain, which the committee released in conjunction with its public hearing to question Snyder and Goodell about its preliminary findings. The documents include accounts of being ridiculed and demeaned by Snyder, watching other executives do the same to lower-level employees, witnessing the harassment of female employees who “were treated like a piece of meat,” as one said, and being asked to lie and engage in unethical behavior as part of their jobs.
The report indicates that during the House’s eight-month investigation, “Snyder waged a ‘shadow campaign’ through lawyers and private investigators to undermine her work, discredit former employees and suspected accusers, and shift blame for his role in the team’s toxic culture.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who testified remotely, said that the team engaged in “unprofessional and unacceptable in numerous respects: bullying, widespread disrespect toward colleagues, use of demeaning language, public embarrassment, and harassment.”
Goodell also insisted that the Commanders had righted the ship.
“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,” he said. “To be clear, the workplace at the Commanders today bears no resemblance to the workplace that has been described to this committee.”
The sworn depositions paint a very different picture of the Redskins’/Football Team;s/Commanders’ history.
From the WaPo report:
During his deposition June 7, which lasted more than six hours, Dave Pauken, the team’s chief operating officer from 2001 to 2006, likened the workplaces dynamic to “an abusive relationship” and placed Snyder at the heart of it.
“The culture was how Dan wanted the culture at the time,” said Pauken, who testified under oath after being subpoenaed by the panel. “ … I think that in the end, it all stems from the owner, Dan Snyder.”
Pauken said he regretted many things he did at Snyder’s behest during his employment, such as not challenging the owner’s insistence on firing female employees for consensual, in-office sexual relationships but not sanctioning the male executives or players involved.
There’s a lot more.
Brian Lafemina, a former chief operating officer and president of business operations, was subpoenaed by the committee, and thus legally required to testify under oath.
During questioning on April 8, Lafemina related an anecdote that undercut Snyder’s claim that he had been unaware of workplace misconduct and took swift action once informed. Lafemina testified that, in a 2018 conversation, he informed Snyder about a female employee’s credible complaint 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.”
Damning stuff, and a spokesperson for Snyder issued the following statement:
“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 more we know about Snyder’s history — he’s owned the team since 1999 — the harder it is to believe that Snyder wasn’t involved in the degradation of franchise culture, and the more difficult it is to swallow Snyder trying to obfuscate that past with recent improvements that Snyder had no choice but to make.
