The call is coming from inside the house.
Bruce Allen, the former general manager of the Washington Commanders franchise, testified to the U.S. House of Representatives that owner Dan Snyder and his staff were the ones who leaked a series of racist, homophobic and misogynistic emails between Allen and former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden.
Allen testified that he was told by an NFL executive, and the move was made in an attempt to shift blame off Snyder as the team was the subject of numerous investigations into workplace misconduct.
“By June 2021, Mr. Snyder went one step further: he identified for the NFL ‘specific inappropriate Bruce Allen e-mails’ to bolster the claims that Mr. Allen was to blame for the toxic workplace culture,” the report issued by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform read.
“Public reports indicate that, although the NFL found Mr. Allen’s e-mails troubling, it determined that they were ‘outside the scope if the original probe into the Washington Football Team.’ Approximately four months later, in October 2021, Mr. Allen learned that many of the ‘inappropriate’ e-mails obtained by Mr. Snyder from his Commanders e-mail account had been leaked to the Wall Street Journal. According to Mr. Allen, when he called NFL’s counsel, Lisa Friel, to complain, she indicated that the Commanders were responsible for the leak, stating ‘We didn’t do it at the league office. It came out of their side.’”
Gruden, with whom Allen exchanged the emails, was the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders at the time of the leak, which occurred during the 2021 NFL season. In the emails, Gruden said then-NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith “had lips the size of michellin [sic] tires,” while also ripping female referees, players who kneeled for the National Anthem and the Rams for drafting openly gay player Michael Sam.
Snyder had been facing a wide variety of allegations of his own. Congress opened a probe into a variety of workplace misconduct claims, with female employees alleging wide-scale sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. Snyder himself was also accused of sexual misconduct by a woman in a 2009 incident on the team plane.
The report found that Snyder had a direct role in the sexual misconduct the team was being investigated for, with allegations including he inappropriately touched a woman at a team dinner, among other accusations.
With the walls closing in on Snyder, Allen is alleging that he leaked the emails to the Wall Street Journal in order to blame the team’s former GM for the workplace culture.
Gruden bore the brunt of the leak, as he was fired by the Raiders after the emails surfaced. He has attempted to defend himself by saying he doesn’t “have a racial bone in his body” in response to the email about Smith. Gruden is in the midst of suing the NFL to uncover who was behind the leaks.
Snyder, who has owned Washington since 1999, has taken initial steps to sell the team, hiring Bank of America Securities to facilitate a potential sale.