The House Oversight Committee heard from Commanders owner Daniel Snyder during a marathon deposition in late July. On Tuesday, the Committee conducted another marathon with the man who served for a decade as one of Snyder’s key employees.
Via Ben Standig of TheAthletic.com, former Commanders president Bruce Allen’s testimony before the Committee lasted 10 hours.
While the session was conducted in private, the Committee can release any, some, or all of the testimony. To date, none of the testimony from Snyder has been released — possibly to ensure that it wouldn’t influence Allen’s testimony, directly or indirectly.
Snyder quite possibly laid extensive blame on Allen for the toxic culture that created numerous employee complaints and concerns, and that ultimately sparked a 10-month investigation by attorney Beth Wilkinson, the results of which the league continues to stubbornly conceal.
It’s possible that the versions from Snyder and Allen conflict, sharply. It’s possible that the Committee will want to ask Snyder more questions, based on the answers provided by Allen.
Regardless, today’s developments show that the investigation remains open and active. Even if the NFL won’t release any of the information discovered by Wilkinson, the Committee apparently has plenty of facts that it may share with the general public at some point in the future. To the extent the details hidden by the league in a possible effort to avoid a groundswell of pressure that would potentially force an effort to remove Snyder overlaps with the testimony developed during the depositions of Snyder and Allen, the end result could be the same.
Indeed, if/when the Committee discloses what it has learned, the cries for a permanent change at the top of the organization could become deafening.