In July, the NFL successfully buried all evidence regarding the investigation of the Washington Football Team. In October, the selective leak of certain emails regarding former Raiders coach Jon Gruden has triggered plenty of questions that weren’t asked in July.
The latest call for transparency has come from lawyers Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, who represent more than 40 former employees of the Washington football team.
“It is truly outrageous that after the NFL’s 10-month long investigation involving hundreds of witnesses and 650,000 documents related to the longtime culture of harassment and abuse at the Washington Football Team, the only person to be held accountable and lose their job is the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders,” Banks and Katz said. “If the NFL felt it appropriate to release these offensive emails from Jon Gruden, which it obtained during its investigation of the Washington Football Team, it must also release the findings related to the actual target of the investigation. Our clients and the public at large deserve transparency and accountability. If not, the NFL and Roger Goodell must explain why they appear intent on protecting the Washington Football Team and owner Dan Snyder at all costs.”
It was already difficult to justify releasing no information about the outcome of the WFT investigation. It becomes impossible to excuse ongoing silence in the aftermath of the Gruden disclosure and leak. The NFL provided information to the Raiders from the WFT investigation regarding emails sent when he wasn’t an employee of the team with a specific purpose in mind. Last night, that purpose apparently was achieved.
If Gruden must accept a major consequence for his collateral role in the situation, the principal players must do the same. Starting with Snyder.
There’s nothing that can force the NFL to do it. There’s also nothing that can stop fans and media from persisting in their position that the NFL should do it.
Everyone should be making their voices heard on this. The NFL opened the door by using the emails to engineer Gruden’s resignation. The rest of those emails must now be made available for the public to scrutinize, and for any and all fair and reasonable consequences to happen, the same way they happened to Gruden.