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Don Van Natta Jr.
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ESPN Senior Writer- Host and co-executive producer of the new ESPN series, “Backstory”
- Member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for national, explanatory and public service journalism
- Author of three books, including New York Times best-selling “First Off the Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers, and Cheaters from Taft to Bush”
- 24-year newspaper career at The New York Times and Miami Herald
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Seth Wickersham
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ESPN Senior Writer- Senior Writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine
- Joined ESPN The Magazine after graduating from the University of Missouri.
- Although he primarily covers the NFL, his assignments also have taken him to the Athens Olympics, the World Series, the NCAA tournament and the NHL and NBA playoffs.
In a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday, an attorney for four dozen former Washington Commanders employees raised “serious concern” that the NFL violated “a very specific promise” of confidentiality that was made to her clients before they testified to investigators about Dan Snyder and the team’s toxic workplace culture.
Lisa Banks, the Washington, D.C., lawyer, cited an ESPN report last week that the Commanders’ lawyers used NFL investigator Beth Wilkinson’s inquiry as a “tip sheet’ to compile an “enemies list” that was used by Snyder’s law firm to commission private investigations and “harass” her clients, including former team cheerleaders and other former employees.
“If true, this was in clear violation of a very specific promise the NFL made to our clients, through Ms. Wilkinson and her team, that witness names would be kept confidential and not shared with Mr. Snyder or the Washington Commanders,” Banks wrote in the letter to Goodell, which was obtained by ESPN.
Banks also threatened to sue the NFL. “If true, the ‘tip sheet’ allegation is not only morally reprehensible,” Banks wrote, “but it also provides the basis for us to take legal action against the NFL, which we will do given the serious harm caused to our clients by their reliance on the NFL’s promises.”
Banks asked for a meeting with Goodell to discuss whether the “tip sheet” allegation is “unfounded.”
“If you ignore our request, as you have with our past requests to talk to you directly, we will assume that the reporting by Mr. Van Natta is true and we will move forward with formal legal action on behalf of our clients,” Banks wrote.
Goodell has said repeatedly, including during testimony before a Congressional committee in June, that he did not ask Wilkinson for a written investigative report “for compelling reasons that continue to this day” — to protect the women’s anonymity.
“We determined that a comprehensive oral briefing would best allow us to receive the information necessary both to evaluate the workplace as it was, and to ensure that the team put in place the policies and processes to reform that workplace — all while preserving the confidentiality of those who participated in the investigation,” Goodell told the committee.
Banks said Goodell used the anonymity of her clients to justify the decision to not release Wilkinson’s investigative findings but she has now discovered that the NFL used the witness list as “a tip sheet” to allow Snyder and his lawyers to investigate and “harass” her clients. Four of Banks’ clients were approached by private investigators, she said, and one was visited by a private investigator within a day of speaking to Wilkinson’s investigators, Banks said. According to congressional testimony, the investigators were hired by Snyder’s law firm, Reed Smith and Banks said the investigators told her clients they were hired by Reed Smith.
“It’s infuriating that Roger Goodell claimed he couldn’t release the Wilkinson report because he was protecting my clients’ confidentiality, and now we find out that he allowed the investigation’s witness list to be used as “a tip sheet” for Dan Snyder’s lawyers and their private investigators,” Banks told ESPN.
“But if it wasn’t for that assurance, some of my clients would not have participated in this investigation,” Banks told ESPN in an interview. “They feared retaliation from Dan Snyder.”
An NFL spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The NFL and Commanders struck a “common interest agreement” on Sept. 8, 2020, to share information during the Wilkinson inquiry of Snyder and the Washington franchise’s toxic workplace culture. The agreement says that the NFL and the team “share common legal interests, and that in furtherance of such interests, the Parties have and will continue to share information and communications with Wilkinson Walsh and with each other in connection with the Investigation.”
The agreement was signed nine days after the NFL took over the Wilkinson investigation from the team because the league discovered Snyder’s attorneys were interfering with her inquiry into the toxic workplace culture.
Wilkinson did not release a final report of her findings of Snyder and the team. She made an oral presentation to Goodell, who on July 1, 2021, fined Snyder $10 million and said Snyder agreed to “step away” from the day-to-day running of his team.
After the NFL took over the investigation, Banks said she complained in an email to Lisa Friel, the NFL’s special counsel for investigations, that at least several of her clients were being harassed by private investigators.
Banks said in her letter that “after the NFL revealed witness names, several of our clients were harassed by private investigators, some were publicly disparaged and/or removed from team alumni groups, at least one who was still working for the team was terminated.”
“No one ever believed that Roger Goodell did not release the Wilkinson report because he cared about confidentiality,” Banks said in an interview. “Reports are routinely written in a way to protect the identity of individuals so they can be made public, just as Mary Jo White’s report soon will be.”
White, a former SEC chairwoman, is currently investigating Snyder, including allegations that he sexually harassed two women, in an inquiry that began in February. When she reports her findings to Goodell, the commissioner intends to meet with Snyder, league sources say.
John Bronwlee, one of Snyder’s lawyers, was asked on a Washington radio station on Monday why Snyder and team lawyers don’t “dissolve the common interest agreement” and release Wilkinson’s findings.
“Roger Goodell went before congress under oath and told Congress there is no report. And he told Congress that he decided — he alone decided — that he didn’t want a written report. What he wanted was the findings presented to him in a meeting orally by Beth Wilkinson,” Brownlee said. “He set this up this way because he wanted people to feel like they could come in, speak freely to Beth and not have some written report out there that reveals their identity.”
Brownlee added that former Commanders employees who have testified before a Congressional roundtable and have spoken out publicly were “free to do that” and the “team did nothing to try to stop that.”
He said that there is “no Wilkinson report to release… and the team and Dan Snyder had zero to do with that.”
Banks said of the agreement between Snyder and the NFL, Snyder had “veto power” on the release of any findings. “The reason that Goodell gave is ridiculous,” Banks said. “Reports are written and produced routinely where names are redacted or otherwise anonymized.
“That’s how these reports are done. That’s how Mary Jo White’s report will be done. They chose not to do it here not because they were trying to protect confidentiality or confidences but they were trying to protect Snyder.”
Prior to an NFL owners meeting at a Manhattan hotel, a senior team executive told ESPN the “common interest agreement” has always troubled senior executives and some owners because it helped Snyder and the NFL jointly monitor and control the Wilkinson investigation.
“Everyone knows the common interest agreement is the main exposure for the league,” said the team executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s the main weak point for the league.”