On Thursday morning, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a 79-page report revealing its findings in the 14-month investigation of Washington Redskins/Football Team/Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, and the toxic workplace environment Snyder was accused of facilitating.
The report was incendiary in multiple ways.
From Mark Maske, Liz Clarke, and Nicki Jhabvala of the Washington Post:
Snyder testified that the team informed the NFL in 2009 about allegations against him that led to a $1.6 million settlement with a former employee who accused him of sexual assault. That assertion stood in contrast to Goodell’s June testimony, during which he was asked whether the league was told of the allegation and replied, “I don’t recall him informing [the league] of that, no.” The report said the NFL subsequently “informed the Committee that the Team did not disclose the specific nature of this allegation to the NFL until more than 10 years later, in 2020” during an investigation conducted by attorney Beth Wilkinson. Wilkinson’s investigation prompted a July 2021 agreement negotiated by the league and Snyder, under which the team was fined $10 million and Snyder stepped away from the franchise’s daily operations.
There was much more in the report, entitled “Conduct Detrimental: How the NFL and the Washington Commanders Covered Up Decades of Sexual Misconduct.”
It was revealed in the report that Snyder and the NFL did everything possible to bury the report put together by attorney Beth Wilkinson on Snyder’s misdeeds. It was revealed that Snyder’s people may have leaked the racist, homophobic, and misogynistic Jon Gruden e-mails to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that forced Gruden to resign. And it was revealed that, as previously reported, Snyder hired private investigators to follow those who might stand in his way as an owner, despite everything that has gone wrong under his tenure.
On Friday, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has been in Snyder’s corner all the way through, had some specific comments about the depth and breadth of the investigation. This he said on the “K&C Masterpiece” show on 105.3 “The Fan” [KRLD-FM] Dallas-Fort Worth, per our own Mark Lane of Texans Wire and Touchdown Wire:
“Love talking to you about the Cowboys, but know what influence you wield across the league,” host Kevin Hageland asked Jones. “I was curious if you could walk us through the logistics on situations like this where the report came out from the U.S. House committee about the Commanders. Does each team read that individually? Do y’all have a meeting about it? What are the logistics about how the owners deal with something like that?”
“First of all, I hope our fans see how politically biased this report is,” Jones said. “This report doesn’t even come out if the Republicans were in Congress. It’s that stupid. And, so, my point is there’s biasness all the way through. There are stories behind the stories. The facts are that Mr. Snyder’s minority partners really went out a long way to try and make him sell. He ended up buying them out, but a lot of this is that. A lot of the testimony, I was involved firsthand. I was among the handful of owners that looked at all of the transcripts, that looked at all of the messages, that looked at all of the data.
“This attorney is on a campaign, the woman attorney, to stop having settlements when you have workplace settlements. That’s another issue, but that’s a part of why this has the front that it has. And, so, there’s a lot more there. I will say this: I’m proud of what the Cowboys have done. We have an excellent [ER] department, excellent. They have been for years. We have committees of employees — I’m not on it, my family’s not on it — and we have thoroughly been involved in a long time trying to improve our workplace. Do we have room for improvement all over? Of course we do. Everybody does. I’m proud of where we are.”
The people running the show were… surprised by Jones’ comments.
The looks on the faces of the guys at the station when Jerry got into his bag on this subject: pic.twitter.com/f0Op2EtDB6
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) December 9, 2022
It is not surprising that Jones would say this, because a number of Republicans politicians have as well — Jones is unfortunately not wrong here.
On December 7, one day before the report was released, Republican members of the House Oversight Committee sent a memo to the Republican Oversight Committee Staff.
“The Democrats’ sham investigation into the Washington Commanders has been an egregious waste of taxpayer-funded resources,” the memo said in part. “From the beginning, Committee Democrats weaponized their power and pushed a one-sided investigation into a private company with no connection to the federal government. This entire charade has been an attempt to distract the American people from President Biden’s self-inflicted crises.”
Jones will get his wish soon enough, when Republicans take majority of the House in 2023.
That the NFL’s most prominent owner, and one side of the House of Representatives, are in lock step on this issue? Well, that should come as no surprise, either.
