Other EmailGate

Sep 6, 2005
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House committee requests all evidence of alleged interference by Daniel Snyder in NFL investigation

Posted by Mike Florio on December 14, 2021, 8:03 PM EST

Plenty have noticed Tuesday’s report from the Washington Post regarding allegations of inference by Washington owner Daniel Snyder in the investigation of workplace misconduct within the organization. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform are among those who have noticed.

On Tuesday, Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, issued a statement calling on the NFL to “immediately produce” all evidence regarding Snyder’s efforts to obstruct the investigation conducted by attorney Beth Wilkinson.



“It has become clear that Dan Snyder’s words and actions regarding the investigation into the Washington Football Team do not align,” Chairwoman Maloney said. “While Mr. Snyder publicly stated that he wanted independent investigators to ferret out the truth, today’s reporting suggests that he was privately trying to obstruct the efforts of the very investigator he hired in an effort to conceal damaging information. These disturbing revelations have only strengthened the Committee’s commitment to uncovering the truth in this matter. The NFL must honor Commissioner Goodell’s promise to cooperate with Congress and fully comply with the Committee’s request for documents.”

Krishamoorthi was equally vocal in his position that the information should be produced.

“Today’s news confirms our worst fears: Dan Snyder actively fought to undermine NFL’s investigation into WFT’s hostile workplace culture,” Krishnamoorthi said. “According to this reporting, not only did he try to prevent a key fact witness — a woman he paid $1.6 million in a sexual misconduct settlement — from speaking with investigators, he went as far as to send private investigator to witnesses’ homes. Snyder will stop at nothing. To get to the bottom of this story, NFL must immediately turn over all evidence of Snyder’s interference and the other documents we requested over a month ago.”

Congress commenced an investigation regarding the WFT investigation after emails were selectively leaked by someone to the media, resulting in Raiders coach Jon Gruden resigning under duress. The league responded, and the two sides apparently are haggling over the question of whether and to what extent the investigation consists of privileged information.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Report: Daniel Snyder allegedly tried to silence accuser in NFL investigation of team

Posted by Mike Florio on December 14, 2021, 6:28 PM EST


The NFL continues to struggle to put the investigation of the Washington Football Team in the rearview mirror.

According to the Washington Post, WFT owner Daniel Snyder — through his lawyers and investigators — allegedly engaged in behavior that can be characterized as attempted interference with the investigation conducted by attorney Beth Wilkinson.

For example, the lawyer representing a woman who received a $1.6 million settlement with the team in 2009 reportedly claims that Snyder’s lawyers tried to keep Wilkinson from speaking to the accuser. The lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, reportedly claimed that Snyder’s lawyers offered even more money beyond the original settlement if she agreed not to speak about her allegations or the settlement. Wilkinson, per the report, described the activities as an effort to “silence” the accuser.

The Post claims that a review of court records and interviews with more than 30 people revealed “several instances” of lawyers and private investigators who worked for Snyder taking steps viewed as efforts to interfere with the investigation. Also, investigators allegedly showed up at the the homes of several former employees or contacted their friends and relatives, conduct that was regarded as intimidating the former employees from participating in the investigation.

Wilkinson eventually interviewed the 2009 accuser, a female employee who accused Snyder of sexual misconduct on his private plane.

The allegations of efforts to interfere with the investigation make the league’s decision not to request a written report from Wilkinson or to share any details whatsoever regarding the findings even more suspicious. From the moment the league decided to bury the evidence, the league (in my opinion) believed that disclosure of the facts harvested by Wilkinson would make it untenable for Snyder to continue to own the team — in the same way that the release of the Jon Gruden emails made it impossible for him to continue to coach the Raiders. Without the specific details made available for public consumption and discussion, a groundswell for Snyder’s ouster can never get going.

The report comes at a time when Congress has been attempting to get more (any) information from the NFL about the investigation. This new information should do nothing to chill the efforts of the House Oversight and Reform Committee to push the league for transparency. Fans and media should do the same. If anything, it should make the committee more determined and zealous.

I continue to believe that the NFL is taking these steps because it is hiding something significant, and that the league believes that the consequences of making clumsy, illogical efforts to hide the evidence will be much less severe than the consequences of having the facts come to light.

Remember, this isn’t about protecting Snyder. It’s about protecting the rest of the American oligarchs who don’t want to be in a position of helplessness if disgruntled former employees begin making allegations and spilling the beans about their behavior. If the allegations against Snyder bring him down, other employees of other teams could be tempted to make false or embellished allegations that could spiral out of control. To avoid those situations, the league likely believes that it needs to prevent setting a precedent.

As more allegations and details come to light, it may be impossible to do that. Here’s hoping that’s the case.
 
I thought Wilkinson spoke on this and said in her investigation she didn't find anything that warranted Snyder being required to sell the team? or did I get details wrong?

I thought the whole investigation was a laugh cause she was the one Snyder hired to carry it out?

I just assumed she was paid good money to find nothing.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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I thought Wilkinson spoke on this and said in her investigation she didn't find anything that warranted Snyder being required to sell the team? or did I get details wrong?

I thought the whole investigation was a laugh cause she was the one Snyder hired to carry it out?

I just assumed she was paid good money to find nothing.
Even the lawyer he hired, he tried to railroad and blackmail. Cant get a worse human than Snyder
 
Even the lawyer he hired, he tried to railroad and blackmail. Cant get a worse human than Snyder

Same with the nfl, to allow him to carry out his own investigation. He has to have some serious dirt on other owners linked to him.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Daniel Snyder, the King of Petty

Posted by Mike Florio on December 15, 2021, 9:46 AM EST

Plenty of anecdotes have made the rounds in recent months regarding the habit of Washington owner Daniel Snyder to insist on being called “Mr. Snyder.” (I was once present for one of those; during Super Bowl week in Dallas, a staffer on PFT Live made the mistake of asking “Dan” to move his bottle.)

However, as trivial and meaningless demands go, here’s an example that takes the cake and gives Snyder the undisputed crown of King of Petty.

Tuesday’s item in the Washington Post explains that Snyder became miffed in January 2020 after learning that former Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen sent a congratulatory text message to new coach Ron Rivera, but not to Snyder.

Snyder, by the way, had recently fired Allen.

The owner tried to avoid paying Allen the balance of his salary under his contract. During the legal battle that unfolded, Snyder’s lawyers wanted Allen to agree to send the congratulatory text message as part of a settlement.

The dispute eventually was resolved, and Allen never sent the text.

Meanwhile, why didn’t the NFL demand text messages when investigating the WFT workplace culture? Snyder supposedly didn’t send emails. Apparently, he sent texts. It’s hard not to wonder what’s lurking in there.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Roger Goodell downplays report that Daniel Snyder interfered with investigation of Washington Football Team

Posted by Mike Florio on December 15, 2021, 7:47 PM EST

The Washington Post coincidentally (or not) timed the publication of its latest bombshell regarding Washington Football Team owner Daniel Snyder to land one day before the NFL’s quarterly ownership meeting. Which means it also landed one day before the next press conference held by Commissioner Roger Goodell, who has claimed that he is available to the media almost every day but who is as a practical matter available roughly 5-7 days per year, at most.

Inevitably asked about the report that Snyder attempted to interfere with attorney Beth Wilkinson’s investigation, Goodell downplayed the accusations.
“I haven’t read the story, but you know we went through a very lengthy period of investigation and discussions,” Goodell told reporters. “The one thing I can say with 100 percent assurance is that it didn’t interfere with the work that our investigator did. We were able to access all the people that she wanted to access, have multiple conversations with those people. There’s always a little bit of a tug and a pull particularly of lawyers and law firms. That’s something that I think we were able to overcome and make sure that we came to the right conclusion.”

But why was there tug and pull? Who was tugging? Who was pulling? It’s one thing for witnesses to be reluctant to speak. It’s quite another for Snyder to be reluctant to have them speak. He pledged full cooperation with the investigation; any effort to limit or shape the information gathered necessarily shows that Snyder was far more interested in engineering a desired outcome than letting the truth come to light, whatever it may be.

While Goodell is surely busy, how and why didn’t he take the time to read a report from the newspaper of record in the nation’s capital accusing Snyder of trying to interfere with the probe? Maybe Goodell already knew the facts. Maybe he didn’t want to know them. Regardless, claiming willful ignorance of such an important story is a bad look.

Then again, it’s better if Goodell can say he doesn’t know what’s in the report. That way, he doesn’t have to deal with the substance of it. That way, he can serve most effectively as a $65 million per year pin cushion for the owners. That way, he can offer up nonsensical suggestions that exonerate any potential attempts by Snyder to interfere with the investigation by saying “it didn’t interfere” (“it,” as in the attempted interference) with the probe.

Here’s the reality, given the recent Washington Post report. If Wilkinson had generated a written report, it likely would have included a section about efforts by Snyder to obstruct the probe. And that would have made it even harder for Snyder to keep the team, if all relevant facts and findings had been reduced to writing for public consumption.

We’ve long believed that, by protecting Snyder, the American oligarchs protected themselves from similar entanglements in the future. That said, there’s also a chance the league office is protecting itself from another Ray Rice-style scandal regarding questions as to what the league knew, when the league knew it, and why the league waited so long to do anything about it. What if WFT employees, with no viable mechanism for reporting misconduct to the team, reported it to the league office? What if the evidence of wrongdoing was so pervasive and consistent that there’s no way the league didn’t know about it?

Last week, former NFL employee Mike Silver candidly admitted that the Rice scandal created a sense within the building that it could take down the whole operation. Maybe, just maybe, the over-the-top effort to conceal the truth as to Snyder and the Washington Football Team flows in part from an effort to prevent calls for accountability, and ultimately dramatic change, at the upper reaches of 345 Park Avenue
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Former WFT employee possibly sheds light on why NFL is covering up the results of the investigation

Posted by Mike Florio on December 23, 2021, 1:53 PM EST


When it comes to the NFL’s stubborn and nonsensical refusal to document and disclose the findings made by lawyer Beth Wilkinson during her 10-month investigation of the Washington Football Team, I believe the league is hiding something. Something big.

Who benefits from the clumsy effort to bury the evidence, concealing it under the illogical and disingenuous claim that the privacy and anonymity of some employees who provided information can be protected only by keeping all factual conclusions secret? Most obviously, Washington owner Daniel Snyder. Less obviously, the other 31 owners, any, some, or all of whom could end up in a similar predicament in the future.

Least obviously, the NFL itself. The league office, more specifically. It’s quite possibly trying to avoid a Ray Rice-style probe regarding what 345 Park Avenue knew and when 345 Park Avenue knew it regarding rampant workplace misconduct in Washington and, in turn, why the league didn’t put an end to it sooner.
The notion that the league may be protecting itself from the fallout of the WFT probe resides between the lines of a new column from Rachel Engleson, a former employee of the Washington Football Team who goes on the record regarding persistent, pervasive, and continuous sexual harassment within the club.

“[M]y eight years working for Washington in my 20s were excruciating, full of sexual harassment and verbal abuse,” she writes. “There was no way to avoid the team’s culture of rampant harassment — at FedEx Field, at the practice and office facility then known as Redskins Park, at the preseason training camp in Richmond, or at off-site gatherings such as rallies, dinners and client events. It was everywhere and anywhere there was a team executive.”

In the Rice case, the notion that the Commissioner had received the notorious elevator knockout video before TMZ published it nearly brought the house down. In this case, it wouldn’t be a question of someone secretly alerting the league to the situation. It would be a question of the situation being so open and obvious that the league office either deliberately turned a blind eye to it (which is bad) or was sufficiently inept to notice it (which also is bad).

Here’s the closest thing to a smoking gun that could tie knowledge of the situation back to the league office, from Engleson: “I reported this harassment to my boss, and to other team executives and lawyers, but no one did anything to stop it. Those who tried, like Brian Lafemina, the team’s former president of business operations, were fired.”

Lafemina. His short tenure with Washington started after EIGHT YEARS with the league office. Surely, Lafemina had one or more (or more) conversations with people in the league office about what was happening within the organization, and how to deal with it. He worked for the team in 2018, two years before the situation finally resulted in the hiring of Wilkinson to investigate.

So why didn’t the NFL take action sooner? What did Lafemina know? How much of it did he share with employees of the league office? Engleson’s column subtly cries out for answers to these questions, questions that hadn’t previously crystallized because the attention previously has centered on other issues.
Did Wilkinson interview Lafemina? Did Wilkinson explore with Lafemina or anyone else the question of whether the league office has complicity in the situation by knowing about the rampant harassment and not stopping it sooner?

With no report from Wilkinson, there’s no way to know whether this angle was pursued. Which could be the primary reason why there’s no report from Wilkinson.

Fortunately for those who believe that the truth must be pursued no matter the consequences, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform already has started exploring the situation. The questions raised by the Lafemina angle need to be added to the list of other items the committee is investigating.
Ultimately, fear of what Lafemina said to former league-office colleagues during (or even after) his short stint with the team could be the real reason why the NFL willingly continues to advance with a straight face the crooked claim that the league is staying silent to help current and former Washington employees. No, the league is staying silent to help itself.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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NFL hasn’t responded to Jon Gruden’s lawsuit, yet

Posted by Mike Florio on December 28, 2021, 10:26 AM EST

The NFL has yet to file a response to Jon Gruden’s lawsuit alleging that the league and Commissioner Roger Goodell specifically targeted Gruden for termination, via the selective leak of emails from the Washington Football Team investigation.

It’s unclear why paperwork has yet to land in court in response to Gruden’s civil complaint, filed on November 11. The NFL has declined comment on the matter, via email to PFT.

There are three possibilities. One, the NFL has secured an extension of the deadline to file a response. Two, the case has settled. Three, the NFL has ignored the complaint and slipped into default.

The most likely explanation is the first one. The least likely, by far, is the third one. It’s possible that the case has quietly resolved.

Chances are a response will be coming, sooner than later. The response could be an answer to the complaint, replete with denials of the allegations. It also could be a motion to dismiss the case, perhaps based on the argument that Gruden must pursue his claim through arbitration.

The fact that it has taken this long for the battle to be joined by the NFL underscores that these things take time. Barring a settlement, it could be months before the litigation ends. Through it all, the case will present compelling and rare questions that may or may not play out in the public eye.

Indeed, it’s unprecedented that a coach has claimed that the league and its Commissioner have specifically targeted a coach for termination, and that supposedly secret emails were leaked to achieve that goal.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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NFL response to Jon Gruden’s lawsuit is due tomorrow

Posted by Mike Florio on January 18, 2022, 9:49 PM EST

The battle will be joined on Wednesday.

According to Daniel Kaplan of TheAthletic.com, the NFL is due to file a response to former Raiders coach Jon Gruden’s lawsuit on Wednesday. Gruden accuses the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell of leaking his emails to former Washington executive Bruce Allen in an effort to force Gruden’s ouster.

As previously explained, the NFL will likely file a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that Gruden must submit the controversy to arbitration under his Raiders contract or any other document to which the league plausibly can point. The NFL also may claim that Gruden’s settlement with the Raiders precludes litigation against the league, depending on the language of the waiver of claims that Gruden signed to get a portion of the balance of his pay from the team. (Presumably, Gruden’s lawyers wrote the documents in a way that preserved his legal rights against the NFL, even though the Raiders are part of the NFL.)

Gruden’s lawsuit was filed on November 11. The response would have been due, by rule, in the middle of December.

It has been speculated that the league’s lawyers and Gruden’s lawyers mutually agreed to extend the deadline for responding. It’s possible that, for example, the two sides agreed that the response would be due four days after the conclusion of the Raiders’ 2021 campaign, in order to avoid creating yet another distraction in a season rife with them.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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NFL files to dismiss Jon Gruden lawsuit, reveals former coach sent offensive messages to at least 6 people​

By Daniel Kaplan
January 20, 2022


The NFL filed in Nevada state court to move former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden’s lawsuit over his leaked emails to arbitration, divulging that the ex-coach also sent offensive electronic correspondences to at least six people. The filings strongly suggest that league commissioner Roger Goodell would have unilaterally fired Gruden had not the coach resigned in October.

“Gruden sent a variety of similarly abhorrent emails to a half dozen recipients over a seven-year period, in which he denounced `the emergence of women as referees,’ and frequently used homophobic and sexist slurs to refer to Commissioner Goodell, then-Vice President Joseph Biden, a gay professional football player drafted in 2014, and others,” the NFL wrote.

That moves the offensive emails beyond being just sent to former Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen. Those were sent while Gruden worked from 2011 to 2018 as a Monday Night Football commentator at ESPN. As part of the league’s investigation into sexual harassment at the WFT, more than 650,000 emails were reviewed.

In 2011, Gruden used a racist trope to refer to NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, who is Black. He wrote to Allen, “Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michelin tires,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

In a 2014 email to Allen, which was publicly filed in a legal proceeding, Gruden referred to perceived league pressure to hire “queer” players, an apparent reference to Michael Sam, an openly gay player trying to make the St. Louis Rams. And Gruden in other emails used homophobic language to describe Goodell.

Gruden sued the league on Nov. 11, alleging the league leaked the emails to get back at him because of offensive things he had written about Goodell. The league denies it leaked the emails, but wrote doing so would have made no sense because the disclosures harmed the NFL’s image, and Goodell could have fired Gruden anyway.

“The crux of Gruden’s Complaint is that somehow the NFL or the Commissioner `leaked’ his non-confidential emails (which were already sitting in the hands of Gruden’s many recipients and as to which Gruden had no colorable expectation of privacy) to, for some inexplicable reason, destroy his career and ruin his reputation, despite the fact that the emails precipitated numerous media stories critical of the League, and also negatively impacted the League and the Raiders in the middle of the football season,” the NFL wrote, and “would have and could have permitted the Commissioner himself to sanction and fire Gruden.”

“Indeed, it would be hard to imagine conduct more detrimental to football than the use by a football coach of a racist trope to describe the leader of NFL Players Association.”

The NFL also filed a motion to dismiss but asked the court to stay that motion until it decides whether the case should move to arbitration. Under NFL contracts, disputes are mandated to be settled in arbitration. Gruden’s argument appears to be that this situation goes beyond the bounds of normal employment disagreements.

“This action—brought by Jon Gruden to blame anyone but himself for the fallout from the publication of racist, homophobic and misogynistic emails that he wrote and broadly circulated—belongs in arbitration under the clear terms of Gruden’s employment contract and the NFL’s Constitution and Bylaws to which Gruden is bound,” the NFL wrote.

The NFL argues that even if it did leak the emails, which it maintains it did not, Gruden could have no expectation of privacy.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Love how they say Gruden had no expectation of privacy. But won’t release anything about Snyder can’t have it both ways.
Exactly. Also, Gruden was working for ESPN, whilst Snyder is an owner. It's clear they're intent is protecting Snyder (and other owners and league identities) who are working in/for the league....but a commentator on ESPN is in the firing line.

The mere fact the NFL's investigation into Snyder entailed no written report too.

Will be keen to read Florio's take on it.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Jon Gruden’s case against the NFL goes to court on February 23

Posted by Mike Florio on January 20, 2022, 10:39 PM EST

The first battle in former Raiders coach Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the NFL will land in court next month.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a hearing will be held on the motions filed Wednesday by the NFL on February 23, with Judge Nancy Allf presiding.

Between now and then, Gruden’s lawyers will file a response to the motion to dismiss the case entirely and the motion to compel arbitration of his claims.
Judge Allf commenced her law practice in 1983. She was elected to the bench in 2010.

Gruden claims that the NFL deliberately leaked emails he sent to former Washington executive Bruce Allen in order to force Gruden’s ouster. The emails came from a 650,000-document cache that the league regards as confidential and refuses to make available for public inspection.

Frankly, the league can’t have it both ways. Either the documents should be released in full, or whoever leaked just enough of them to bring down Gruden should be accountable.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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Congress to hold roundtable with former WFT employees

Posted by Mike Florio on January 27, 2022, 8:47 PM EST

A hearing isn’t scheduled yet, but it could be coming. For now, Congress is taking another approach to getting to the truth that the NFL is trying to hide.

Earlier today, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform announced that it will hold a “hybrid roundtable” with several former employees of the Washington Football Team. The meeting will discuss “issues of workplace misconduct and the National Football League’s (NFL) failure to take steps to prevent sexual harassment and verbal abuse” within the organization.

“For more than twenty years, employees of the Washington Football Team were subjected to sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and other misconduct,” Carolyn B. Maloney, chairperson of the committee, said in a release. “It is becoming increasingly clear that not only did the team fail to protect employees, but the NFL went to great lengths to prevent the truth about this toxic work environment from coming to light. The NFL’s decision to cover up these abuses raises serious questions about its commitment to setting workplace standards that keep employees safe. I commend these victims for their bravery in coming forward to share their stories. No organization is above the law, I am committed to getting to the bottom of these abuses and ensuring that every American — no matter where they work — is safe from workplace harassment and discrimination.”

The NFL has tried to justify concealing all evidence developed by a 10-month investigation of the WFT workplace culture by arguing that complete secrecy protects the rights of any of them who requested anonymity. It’s a flimsy, clumsy, disingenuous position. It would be very easy to disclose details of the misconduct while also changing names to protect those who want to be protected.

The blanket attempt to hide all facts in the broad and general name of protecting an unspecified number of current or former WFT employees who requested privacy suggests that the league is grasping for any basis, credible or not, to justify brushing inconvenient evidence under the rug.

At first, we thought the league was trying to help team owner Daniel Snyder. Then, we thought the league is trying to protect other owners from a similar fate. More recently, it dawned on us that the league may be trying to conceal its failure to take action when it knew or should have known about the problems within the organization.

Regardless, the NFL is trying very hard to conceal the truth. This suggests that, whatever it is, it’s big. And that its disclosure would have potentially significant and sweeping consequences for Snyder, and for the league office.
 
Sep 6, 2005
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2.2.22 - rebrand reveal

2.3.22 - congressional hearing on WFT workplace conduct etc

 
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