Lawyers for more than 40 former Washington Commanders employees have demanded that House Republicans remove “sexualized and salacious photographs” of the NFL team’s cheerleaders from a report authored by Republicans regarding the football team.
Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, the attorneys, issued a letter to Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., ranking member on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, saying their “clients are both humiliated and incensed by the GOP’s reckless dissemination of these photographs in an official Congressional document.”
“They also feel retaliated against by Republican Committee members who have apparently chosen to embarrass them publicly for coming forward,” said the lawyers. “There was simply no legitimate reason for GOP members to have done this, and it has caused our clients additional and unnecessary pain.”
The GOP report, released on December 7, came ahead of the Democratic-led committee’s final report, which claimed that dozens of Commanders employees were damaged for more than two decades due to a “toxic work culture.”
The inclusion of the images was a “desperate effort,” according to the employees’ attorneys, to shield club owner Daniel Snyder from the report’s damning findings.
The attorneys have requested that the pictures be removed from congressional servers, websites, and, if applicable, the Congressional Record.
Republicans revealed the 210-page dossier, which included intimate images of the former cheerleaders, last week. According to their lawyers, the photographs “which show women’s breasts, buttocks and genital areas, were disseminated without the women’s permission.” (The GOP report obscured the women’s faces and some body parts with black boxes.)
A Republican Oversight Committee aide issued a statement criticizing the Democrats’ report but defending the GOP memo.
“From the start, Democrats cherry-picked facts to support their fabricated narrative rather than conduct a fulsome investigation. Republicans issued an internal memo that included information showing that there is more evidence to be considered,” the aide continued.
“Prior to circulating the internal memo, Committee staff took steps to ensure all sensitive images involving cheerleaders were redacted and their identities kept confidential. As we have said from the beginning, the Oversight Committee is not the proper venue for this investigation. Oversight Republicans intend to return the Committee to its primary responsibilities of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.”
The Democrats’ report, released last week, “reflects the damning findings of the Committee’s year-long investigation and shows how one of the most powerful organizations in America, the NFL, mishandled pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct at the Washington Commanders,” according to Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney.
“Our report tells the story of a team rife with sexual harassment and misconduct, a billionaire owner intent on deflecting blame, and an influential organization that chose to cover this up rather than seek accountability and stand up for employees. To powerful industries across the country, this report should serve as a wake-up call that the time of covering up misconduct to protect powerful executives is over.”
