Here’s why the NFL fined Daniel Snyder $60 million on his way out of the Commanders
Dan Snyder is officially, finally, mercifully out of the NFL. On his way to the door, the league provided one last reminder why everyone should be happy to see him go.
Minutes after the NFL's team owners unanimously approved Josh Harris' $6.05 billion purchase of the Washington Commanders, the league released a 23-page report containing the findings of Mary Jo White, the attorney tasked with investigating sexual harassment and financial impropriety allegations against Snyder.
The conclusions of the report would be devastating for a man still in the NFL. It corroborated serious harassment allegations from former Commanders employee Tiffani Johnston and claims the club had cooked its books to avoid sharing money with the NFL. In response to the investigation, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell fined Snyder $60 million, easily the largest fine ever levied by the league and bigger than the next 10 largest sanctions we've ever seen combined.
The timing of the release might have been something of a favor to Snyder (or the NFL itself), as the report was somewhat overshadowed by the news of the official sale, but it also cemented the nature of Wednesday's transaction. There was no praise of Snyder's two-plus decades of stewardship in D.C., or sentimental farewells. Just lawyers coldly validating how nearly everything we thought about Snyder was true, with any ambiguities created by the lawyers of the man himself.
Here are the report's major takeaways and what you should know on why the NFL fined Snyder $60 million after already fining him $5 million in response to the unreleased Beth Wilkinson report. Everything below comes from the report unless otherwise noted.
Tiffani Johnston told 4 different people that Dan Snyder sexually harassed her, had a direct eyewitness and no refutations from her boss
It's hard to pinpoint the beginning of Snyder's downfall, the exact moment it became clear his days in the NFL were numbered. It could have been the explosive Washington Post report that exposed a toxic workplace culture, but didn't directly implicate Snyder. It could have been when Congress got involved or, if we're being cynical, when NFL teams were given reason to believe he was stealing money from them (more on that later).
The most direct moment, though, was the testimony of Johnston, a former Commanders cheerleader and marketing employee who told Congress that Snyder had sexually harassed her by putting his hand on her leg at a dinner then tried to push her into his limo.
Soon after Johnston's testimony, the Commanders announced they would investigate the matter. The NFL, realizing that Dan Snyder is the last person who should be investigating Dan Snyder, quickly vetoed that decision and hired White to look into the Commanders, and here we are.
Johnston's full account, as described by the report, is difficult to read. Allegedly, the only thing that stopped Snyder was his lawyer telling him that forcing a woman into his limo was a bad idea:
As recounted by Ms. Johnston: After dinner, the group left the restaurant and Mr. Snyder had a car with a driver waiting outside for him. Once on the sidewalk, Mr. Snyder invited Ms. Johnston to ride with him in his car, saying he would take her home. She declined, saying she was going to get her own car and drive home. Mr. Snyder persisted and said he would drive Ms. Johnston to her car and put his hand on her lower back and began pushing her towards his car. Ms. Johnston again said no to Mr. Snyder and recalls nervously laughing. As this was occurring, Ms. Johnston looked over her shoulder and made eye contact with [central marketing officer Mitch] Gershman, who did not say or do anything to help her, making her think that he and Mr. Snyder had orchestrated her presence at the dinner. Then, she heard someone who identified himself as Mr. Snyder’s attorney say firmly, in words to the effect: “Dan, Dan this is a bad idea. As your attorney, do not do this.” At this point, Ms. Johnston managed to get away from Mr. Snyder and left.
After investigating the matter, the White report concluded Johnston's allegations were sustained. It found four different people who said Johnston told them about the dinner incident "very shortly" after it happened, with all of them describing her as "honest and professional."
That was in addition to the account of Jason Friedman, who also blew the whistle on the Commanders' alleged financial improprieties. Friedman was at the dinner and said he witnessed Snyder attempting to pull Johnston into the limo, as well as Johnston walking away while "smiling in agony."
The report also features a text exchange between Friedman and Mitch Gershman, Johnston's boss, on Feb. 3, 2022, the day of Johnston's testimony. Gershman doesn't deny it happened:
Gershman: Was I at the event in question with Tiffany and the owner?
Gershman: Send me her contact info if ur comfortable. I had no idea
Friedman: You and I were both at that dinner.
Gershman reportedly declined to be interviewed by investigators.
The footnotes mention how Snyder denied the account by telling Congress, "No, I don't own a limousine." The investigation found a) witnesses who said Snyder was always driven around in a black Mercedes-Maybach, described by many as a limo, and b) there are several entries on Snyder's calendar referring to limousine rental services.
The report concedes the exact date of the dinner incident is unknown and that there are some inconsistencies between Friedman and Johnston's account, but it explained such differences are "normal." Memories are fickle.
A Commanders senior exec stole a revealing photo of Johnston and was found with it near Snyder's office
The other allegation Johnston levied against Snyder was that one of his cronies stole a revealing photo of Johnston from when she was posing for the Commanders' cheerleader swimsuit calendar.
The photo in question was enlarged and covered with sticky notes hiding areas that still needed to be edited to cover inadvertent exposures. An unidentified Commanders senior executive was said to have walked into the room, noticed the photo, requested to see it and was told no by the employees doing the editing. When the employees went to lunch, that executive took the photo.
Those employees soon went on a search for the photo and found the executive with it outside his office and near Snyder's office.
The report does not confirm Snyder had a hand in the photo theft, as no witnesses saw him directly involved. Snyder denied he was involved, but witnesses said they believed he was present in the office that day, with one saying they saw his car parked outside the incident.
'[i]f the NFL had a jail … we would be in it'
A good rule of thumb is that when a business, especially a business owned by a person like Dan Snyder, admits to hiding $1 million from its most important business partners, it probably hid a lot more than $1 million.
Such was the case with the Commanders.
The financial allegations against the organization came down to it hiding ticket revenue from other teams, described as "a second set of books" by Friedman, and defrauding season-ticket holders by withholding deposits. The former was far more serious, as far as the NFL is concerned.
NFL teams are required to pass along 40 percent of home game net ticket revenue to the league. The Commanders allegedly did all they could to avoid doing that by marking such revenues as being from events to which the NFL had no claim (think concerts).
The investigation sustained both allegations, while noting multiple eyewitnesses said Snyder pressured employees to improve the team's financial performance. The words "every last dollar" were apparently used.
How bad did it get? Well ...
In one 2010 email that the Club produced, a former employee, after agreeing to allocate NFL shareable revenue instead to a college football game, jokingly emailed the CFO: “[i]f the NFL had a jail… we would be in it.” Another former employee, who specifically commented on the absence of support for the transfers of revenues from NFL accounts into special event accounts, told us of their contemporaneous discomfort with the Club’s recording and reporting of NFL revenues, commenting that the overall culture was to “maximize revenue, break the rules if you need to,” and “do as much as you can, but don’t get caught.”
Publicly, the Commanders vociferously denied doing this stuff. While speaking to investigators, however, the team reportedly acknowledged failing to report $1.09 million in shareable revenues between 2013 and 2015.
When investigators dug deeper, that number became comically larger. The report says it specifically nailed down $11 million in revenues that club improperly hid from the NFL. That almost certainly wasn't the extent of it, as the report mentions a forensic accounting review found $44.49 million of ticket, parking, license and other revenues were instead put in non-shareable special events accounts.
The report stops short of saying the NFL was entitled to its cut of that money, mostly because of a lack of compliance from the Commanders.
Snyder wasn't directly implicated to have been involved, but the report notes it found no reason to believe he wasn't.
Dan Snyder was predictably unhelpful with the NFL's investigation
Throughout this entire process, it was a given Snyder would be about as helpful to the NFL investigators as he has been to the Commanders' front office.
The report confirms this. Snyder and the Commanders said they would cooperate, but Snyder refused to be interviewed for nearly a year, then declared he would speak for only an hour, not nearly enough time in such legal investigations. As you might expect, he denied everything.
The Commanders also refused for several months to produce "critical documents" and claimed it was too burdensome to provide needed accounting records and documentation.
The team also tried to "help" investigators by suggesting 27 witnesses to be interviewed, many turning out to be unhelpful. One of them was a Snyder family tutor. Another was a person who "spoke extensively regarding Mr. Snyder’s financial generosity," but had nothing to give regarding the matters being investigated.
