The House Committee accepted Dan Snyder, owner of Washington leaders, to testify, but only under a subpoena

The House Oversight and Reform Committee accepted the offer of Washington leaders’ owner Dan Snyder to testify by video link on July 28, but said he could not do so voluntarily as requested by his attorney.

In a letter Tuesday from President Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) to Snyder’s attorney, Karen Patton Seymour, the committee said it would only accept his testimony under a subpoena. The committee reissued Snyder’s subpoena and gave his lawyers Wednesday noon to accept it.

The commission had initially issued a subpoena on 24 June to testify six days later, but this subpoena was not granted.

Maloney wrote that the commission wants Snyder to testify under a subpoena to ensure that “his testimony will be complete and complete and will not be restricted in the way it would be if the filing was voluntary.”

Maloney also cited Snyder’s “month-long refusal” to cooperate with the committee as another factor in his desire to appear through a subpoena.

Dave Rapallo, director of Georgetown University’s Federal Legislation Clinic and director of Democratic personnel for the House Committee on Oversight and Reform from 2011 to 2021, said last week that there is an important difference between voluntary testimony versus subpoena.

“If a subpoena is issued, you have to answer the question asked,” said Rapallo. “If it’s voluntary, and you’re not on summons, you don’t.”

Rapallo said that if Snyder testified voluntarily, he could claim that he could not answer due to nondisclosure agreements. In the letter, Maloney said: “Mr. Snyder has a disturbing history of using non-disclosure agreements to cover up workplace misconduct – conduct that is central to our investigation – and it would be wholly inappropriate for him to use the same tactic to withhold information from a panel.”

Several employees and former employees who participated in the NFL’s internal investigation of leaders’ workplace culture signed nondisclosure agreements.

Commanders did not immediately respond with a statement regarding the letter.

Maloney said the commission was already agreeing to allow Snyder to testify remotely and give him access to written interviews with other witnesses as well as providing him with “a description of the types of information that have been redacted by the commission in each of these earlier texts.”

In her letter to the committee last week, Seymour said Snyder plans to be in Israel “most of July” and “until August” to celebrate the first anniversary of his mother’s death. Seymour said she will travel to Israel for Snyder’s videotaping, which will be done in private, but the committee can choose to publish all or part of the transcript.

Seymour stated in the letter that she had previous work duties in Europe at the earlier proposed dates of July 6 and 8. She was also in Europe on business on June 22 when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell testified at a hearing regarding the investigation. Seymour said Snyder would agree to testify on July 28 or 29 — the last two days the House of Representatives sits before the August recess.

The captains are scheduled to begin training camp on July 27, with the team’s first pre-season game against the Carolina Panthers on August 13.

Snyder regularly attended his team’s training camp until recent years. In 2019, he didn’t make it to camp until August due to vacation plans. In 2020, he did not attend due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He did not turn up last year after his wife, Tanya, took over the team’s day-to-day operations after the NFL imposed a record $10 million fine, following the league’s internal investigation into sexual misconduct and workplace culture within the Washington franchise. .

At NFL meetings in March, Goodell said Snyder would not represent the team on a daily basis “for the foreseeable future” and that they would discuss his return “at some point.” According to the league’s source, that discussion has yet to take place.

Snyder traveled to France in June to attend the awards ceremony the same week the committee invited him to testify with Goodell. During Goodell’s testimony on June 22, Maloney announced that she plans to summon Snyder for her deposit.