The House Committee on Oversight and Reform called on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in a Friday letter to release the full findings of the investigation into the Washington Commanders' workplace environment by Feb. 14, threatening "alternate means of obtaining compliance."
"We have received the Committee's letter," league spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement Friday. "We will review it and respond to them. We will continue to cooperate, as we have throughout the investigation. To date, we have shared nearly 80,000 pages of documents and made many others available for the Committee to review, in addition to responding to questions from the Committee, both in writing and in the course of numerous discussions.
"The Committee has requested many documents which are clearly protected by the attorney-client privilege or are attorney-work product. The League, and not the team, has and will determine which information it is in a position to produce."
The attorney for Commanders owner Dan Snyder, Jordan Siev, released a statement Friday stating "all remaining non-privileged emails are being provided to the Committee shortly."
"Regarding today's letter from the Committee to the NFL, neither Mr. Snyder nor the team has ever done anything to block the Committee from receiving any documents it has requested from the NFL that are not expressly protected by attorney-client privilege or attorney work product," Siev said in a statement obtained by NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport.
In conjunction with their letter, the committee also released documents that showed the league and the team agreed to pursue a "joint legal strategy" related to the probe.
According to the documents, the private agreement was signed days after the league said it had taken over an investigation of the team initiated by Snyder. It stipulated that any information exchanged as a result of the investigation was privileged and could not be shared without the consent of both the NFL and the team.
The committee also said the league withdrew from its common-interest agreement with the team in October, creating a "legal limbo" that is preventing the release of documents requested by Congress.
The committee also found that the team and Snyder agreed that attorney Beth Wilkinson's firm, which conducted the investigation, would produce a written report, but that Goodell asked Wilkinson to present her findings to him orally instead. Per documents sent to the committee on behalf of the NFL on Nov. 4, Goodell requested an oral briefing because he believed it "would better preserve the anonymity assurances given to many of the witnesses and the confidentiality of the investigative information, findings, and recommendations that Ms. Wilkinson shared with the Commissioner during those briefings."
In July 2020, Snyder commissioned an investigation into the team's workplace environment that was taken over by the NFL at the end of August of that year. After the investigation by Wilkinson's firm, the league fined Washington $10 million in July 2021, and Snyder temporarily ceded day-to-day operations of the team to his wife, Tanya.
On Thursday, Snyder denied allegations made against him during a congressional roundtable in Washington, D.C., including a new allegation of workplace misconduct by a former team employee.
On Friday, Siev issued a second denial on Snyder's behalf:
"The former team employee who spoke for the first time yesterday resigned through a thankful and cheery resignation note more than 13 years ago -- citing her '5 and a half wonderful years working for the Washington Redskins.' We understand that she was approached by the Wilkinson law firm in 2020 as part of its investigation, but she refused to be interviewed. The unsworn allegations she made for the first time yesterday against Mr. Snyder are false, and have been categorically denied by Mr. Snyder."
During the roundtable discussion, Tiffani Johnston, who worked for the team for eight years starting in 2002 as a cheerleader and marketing manager, said Snyder placed his hand on her thigh without her consent at a team dinner, and that he pushed her toward his limousine with his hand on her lower back. She had not previously disclosed those allegations to the media or investigators.
The NFL said on Thursday it will review and consider Johnston's allegations "as we would any other new allegations regarding workplace misconduct" and would "determine any further action as appropriate."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
