Jack Baer
·Writer
Sat, July 2, 2022
Throughout the Washington Commanders' workplace harassment scandal, team owner Dan Snyder has played the part of the out-of-office billionaire, shocked to discover the team he has owned since 1999 allegedly had such horrible issues, when he wasn't questioning the veracity of said issues.
Specifically, he claimed to be "unaware" of the allegations until they were reported by The Washington Post and lamented being "too hands-off as an owner" in a statement released soon after the scandal broke.
A group of former Washington employees have testified to Congress this simply wasn't the case, according to The Washington Post.
Snyder's claims have also since been undermined by two allegations against him by former female employees, one who claimed he touched her leg and tried to push her into his limo and one who claimed he groped her and tried to disrobe her in the back of a private plane.
Ex-Washington employees don't think a lack of Dan Snyder was the problem
The Post reports, Dave Pauken, who worked as Washington's chief operating officer form 2001 to 2006, portrayed Snyder as the heart of "an abusive relationship" and flatly denied Snyder was ever "hands off."
From the Post:
“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.”
Asked about Snyder’s assertion that he had simply been too “hands off,” Pauken described him rather as an owner steeped in every detail of the organization.
“My reaction was that that is not a true statement,” Pauken said. Asked to elaborate, he said: “I have no experience with him, nor do any of my colleagues, where he was hands off.”
Pauken reportedly said he regretted many things he did for Snyder while working for him, including not pushing back on Snyder's insistence that female employees be fired for in-office relationships while not sanctioning the men and pouring milk under the carpet of Washington Nationals owner Mark Lerner's suite so it would go rancid.
He didn't paint a pleasant picture when it came to Snyder's character:
On more than one occasion, Pauken said, Snyder summoned him before kickoff to the owner’s box overlooking FedEx Field, where the owner and a friend would watch the cheerleaders’ pregame practice.
“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?’”
Other witnesses included Jason Friedman, a marketing executive who worked for the team for 24 years, who described a culture of fear in the workplace, and Brian Lafemina, a former chief operating officer and president of business operations, who said Snyder personally shot down a female employee's complaint of misconduct by play-by-play announcer Larry Michael because Michael was "a sweetheart."
Michael would later step down in 2020 before allegations of misconduct were made public by the Post.
Dan Snyder remains under fire as the Commanders' misconduct allegations play out. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
Washington cheerleader said Dan Snyder's workplace overhaul included visits from PIs
Another frequent note Snyder has liked to hit amid the scandal is the idea that the team used to have issues, but has been in the process of fixing them.
One former cheerleader said part of the process of fixing them has been to send out private investigators to ex-employees' homes:
Abigail Dymond Welch, an eight-year veteran and former captain of the team’s cheerleading squad, told the committee of events that took place in the months after the workplace allegations surfaced publicly and the team had undertaken its front-office overhaul. Welch said a private investigator who said he “worked on behalf of the Washington Redskins” appeared at her Texas home in April and May 2021 to ask about “interactions” with Bruce Allen and the sexual misconduct investigation into the team.
Welch told the committee that she knew of “maybe five” other former cheerleaders who had also been visited at home by private investigators seeking similar information.
The Commanders pushed back on the Post's reporting in a statement while lauding the progress it says it has made since the workplace misconduct allegations were reported:
Offered the opportunity to respond to the specific allegations laid out in the committee’s materials, 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.”
Where the Commanders' allegations currently stand
As hands-off as Snyder supposedly was, one of the changes made after attorney Beth Wilkinson completed her investigation was him giving up day-to-day operations of the team while having his wife instituted as co-CEO. The NFL also fined the team $10 million.
That wasn't the end of the investigations into the Commanders, though, as the NFL has since opened a second investigation led by Mary Jo White into the allegations against Snyder.
There is also the matter of Congress, whose subpoenas Snyder is currently ducking. That investigation is still ongoing, and could include allegations of financial impropriety at the expense of the NFL's other teams.
Report: Commanders owner Dan Snyder participated in team’s rancid culture
Doug Farrar
Sat, July 2, 2022
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.
In a Saturday Washington Post article written by Nicki Jhabvala, Liz Clarke, and Mark Maske, it is revealed via testimony related to those hearings that Snyder was nowhere near as “hands off” as he had claimed.
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.
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