WASHINGTON — The now-outgoing owner of the Washington Commanders, Dan Snyder, will have to pay the NFL $60 million after a report released concurrently with the sale announcement Thursday says he did, in fact, sexually harass former Commanders employee Tiffani Johnston.
More than a year ago, the NFL hired Mary Jo White to investigate former Commanders employee Tiffani Johnston's allegations of misconduct against Snyder and financial impropriety claims from Jason Friedman, who worked for the organization for 24 years. The 23-page report, released moments after the announcement that the NFL owners approved the sale from Snyder to the Josh Harris group, states that Snyder sexually harassed Johnston as she had claimed, and that the organization withheld $11 million in revenue that should have been shared with other teams, required by NFL policies.
"After extensive investigation, we have sustained both Tiffani Johnston's allegation of sexual harassment by Mr. Snyder and Jason Friedman's allegation of deliberate underreporting of NFL revenues by the Club to avoid its VTS sharing obligations," the report's conclusion reads. "... In the course of the Investigation, we also identified a variety of transactions and accounting entries, left unexplained by the Club, which raised a number of issues as to whether a significant portion of the revenues recorded were NFL-related revenues improperly shielded from VTS sharing."
Despite repeatedly saying he would cooperate with the investigation, the report found that Snyder "failed" to uphold that promise, only speaking to White for one hour.
"On February 18, 2022, the Club stated their 'intent on having a full and fair investigation' of the allegations and committed to 'cooperate fully with Ms. White,'" the report says. "Despite that pledge, Mr. Snyder and the Club failed to cooperate. Mr. Snyder, for nearly a year, refused to be interviewed and, when he did finally agree to an interview, he declared that it would be limited to one hour."
White's investigation did rule the evidence "insufficient" on some of the claims made.
"We found that the evidence was insufficient to demonstrate Mr. Snyder's involvement in the calendar photo incident or in the security deposit issues, and was inconclusive as to his personal participation in the Club's improper shielding of VTS revenues," the report says.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said, "I think the findings speak for themselves. We had an obligation to release those publicly. We did; we shared those with the ownership today – had a full discussion of that," Goodell said. "The findings do speak for themselves, in both cases, particularly with Ms. Johnston. That's inappropriate, it's wrong, and it doesn't match our values. And so, again, her findings were clear."
WUSA9 has a copy of the Mary Jo White report and will be going through it to so Commanders fans know what exactly it says about the case. In the meantime, you can read the report for yourself below:
This is a developing story. Stick with WUSA9 for updates as we bring them to you.