Investigation Finds Commanders Hid Revenue, Snyder Harassed Team Employee

 

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Outgoing Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder will pay the NFL $60 million as part of the closing of the sale of his franchise after a league investigation, conducted by attorney Mary Jo White, concluded that the team withheld revenue it should have shared with other franchises and that Snyder sexually harassed a former team employee.

White also found that the Commanders failed to cooperate with her investigation. Snyder agreed to be interviewed last month for the investigation but limited that interview to one hour, according to White’s findings that are detailed in a 22-page document.

“I think that the findings speak for themselves,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said at a news conference. “We had an obligation to release those publicly. We did. We shared those with the ownership today [and] had a full discussion of that. The findings do speak for themselves. In both cases, particularly with Ms. Johnston, that’s inappropriate. It’s wrong. It doesn’t match our values. … Her findings were clear.”

Goodell said he believed the penalty was sufficient, given the findings.

“The payment that will be made will be in resolution of the Mary Jo White findings as well as the resolution of all outstanding matters,” Goodell said.

The 17-month investigation led by White, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, sustained allegations made by two former team employees, Tiffani Johnston and Jason Friedman.

The probe began in February 2022 after Johnston, a former cheerleader and marketing manager for the team, told members of Congress that Snyder had harassed her at a team dinner, putting his hand on her thigh and pressing her toward his limo. Snyder denied the accusations, calling the allegations made directly against him “outright lies.”

That April, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (then called the House Committee on Oversight and Reform) detailed allegations of financial improprieties by the team and Snyder in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. Those allegations, which the Commanders denied, were made by Friedman, a former ticket and sales executive for the team. White’s investigation focused on financial allegations occurring between 2009 and 2015.

“Over three years ago, our clients bravely came forward to expose the egregious sexual harassment and abuse at the Washington Commanders, and today they can claim total vindication,” attorneys Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, who represent Johnston, Friedman and other former Commanders employees, said in a statement. “Dan Snyder has been forced to sell the team he said he would never sell, pay a massive fine to the NFL and there now exists an extensive public record of his personal wrongdoing and the misconduct that occurred under his leadership.”

White’s findings sustained Johnston’s allegation that Snyder put his hand on her thigh under the table and pushed her toward the back seat of his car.

The investigation also sustained another allegation by Johnston that a former senior executive for the team improperly took and viewed an unedited cheerleader calendar photo. But the evidence was insufficient to show that Snyder was involved in that incident, White’s investigation concluded.

White’s findings corroborated Friedman’s allegation that the Commanders intentionally shielded and withheld an amount of shareable NFL revenue in violation of league policies. White’s investigation identified approximately $11 million in revenue that the team appeared to have improperly shielded from sharing with other NFL franchises and owners.

The investigation also identified as much as an additional $44 million in revenue that was transferred from shareable to non-shareable accounts. But White’s investigation was not able to determine the exact amount the team improperly transferred, citing a lack of evidence. Under NFL policy, 34 percent of this type of revenue was required to be shared with other teams.

The investigation concluded that Snyder was aware and supportive of the team’s efforts to minimize revenue-sharing and that he set a tone at the top of the organization.

According to White’s findings, Snyder declined to be interviewed “for nearly a year” before agreeing to speak to her team remotely June 29. In the one-hour interview, Snyder denied Johnston’s allegations of sexual harassment and claimed to have “little knowledge or recollection of any substantive information” relevant to Friedman’s claims of financial improprieties.

Yet White found that Snyder “personally engaged” in the team’s efforts to shield NFL revenue, “including through discussion of strategies” with witnesses to his efforts, saying that he sought “ ‘profit, profit’ and ‘always going to get every last dollar.’ ” Her probe concluded that Snyder recognized that, as the team’s owner, he was ultimately responsible for what occurred with the franchise.

The findings stated that some former team employees in sales, ticketing and finance agreed to be interviewed and acknowledged to White’s investigative team that Commanders personnel knew the methods of shielding revenue violated NFL policy. Their recollections to White’s team were corroborated by emails, including one from 2010 in which a former employee, after agreeing to move some revenue that should have been shared with the NFL to a college football game, “jokingly emailed the CFO: ‘If the NFL had a jail … we would be in it,’ ” according to White’s findings.

Emails also corroborated what Friedman told House Oversight Committee members about the team maintaining “two sets of books,” including one set of financial records used to underreport certain ticket revenue to the NFL. Some of the documents included in the emails “explicitly detailed” how shareable revenue were improperly diverted to non-shareable accounts, according to White’s findings.

White’s summary also noted that documents showed that special event and football-related revenue reported to the NFL were “different” from what was reported to Snyder.

“When we pointed out that the club’s acknowledgment contradicted its public denials and representations to the FTC, counsel responded that some of the club’s prior statements to [the government] were ‘stronger than we would like,’ ” White stated in her findings.

A team spokesman did not respond immediately when contacted for comment.

White attended Thursday’s league meeting in a Minneapolis-area hotel alongside the Mall of America. She briefed the owners on her conclusions. The owners voted unanimously Thursday to approve Snyder’s $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders to a group led by Josh Harris. The sale could close as soon as Friday.

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The investigation’s findings concluded that the Commanders failed to properly cooperate. White found that the team was slow in providing documents, although it ultimately did supply them as requested. The Commanders did not make their external auditors available, according to White’s findings. The team’s failure to cooperate contributed to White’s inability to determine the total amount of improperly shielded revenue and to ascertain the extent of Snyder’s knowledge and participation, the investigation found.