The Kevin Sheehan Show - Showtime For Goodell & Congress

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Kevin and Howard Gutman post-game todays' matinee performance of Roger Goodell's testimony in front of Congress.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheon Show. Here's Kevin. The Roger Goodell testimony just ended. That's the show today. Howard Gutman is with me.

We'll postgame it a little bit together here. The show today is presented by Window Nation. Call Window Nation at 86690 Nation if you need new windows or go to WindowNation.com. They'll give you a free estimate if you mention my name and their deal right now is buy two get two free. So you're paying half price on the windows. Plus, you don't have to put any money down. You don't have to make any payments, and they won't charge you interest for two full years. If you've been thinking about new windows, I would urge you to give Windonation the first shot. You've got nothing to lose. Free estimate. Mention my name. 86690 Nation, windonation.com.

You're going to pay half price on the windows, and you don't have to pay anything for two years. Howard Gutman, of course, has been with me many times over the last year, year and a half, two years, whatever it's been at this point, Howard, discussing all of these legal issues. Long time, D.C. prominent attorney was the ambassador to Belgium during the Obama years. So I've got a bunch of notes from the two and a half, two hours, 45 minutes, whatever it was of testimony of really more or less political theater. but I'll let you take the first swing at it and I'll react. What did you make of today? So I thought, first of all, we live in a heck of a great country. We've got Republican congressmen who think Roger Goodell is going to join him and saying racism is a myth.

We've got Democrat congressmen who've never seen a person own a club. It was a circus. Let's see where the bottom line was. First, Roger Goodell gets an eight. Roger Goodell performed really well. There were one or two weak points in the NFL's case. He was prepared for it. What Goodell said basically was,

we think what was going on at the Redskins was a horror. We got the best and the Brias Beth Wilkinson to investigate it. She did a fabulous job. We came out with finding it was a horror. We gave a harsh punishment of $10 million of requirements of how they fixed their organization. and fix it fast. We basically sidelined Dan Snyder. He did not cross that line. Was he suspended or not? The ridiculous conversation Dan had, I'm not suspended. I'm just on the sideline. He didn't cross

that line, but he said we got Dan off to the sideline. And now the Redskins slash commanders are a great model. He had a couple of weaknesses. Why didn't you release the Wilkinson report? He said the people who cooperated with the investigation, many of them wanted privacy. They didn't want this to go on. They want to go on with their life, and it was important for them to cooperate. The Democrats said, no, most of them are here today, and they want it released. Or at least in other reports, you cross out the names, you redact what you need to redact. Why wouldn't you do that?

And Goodell said, basically, we thought the privacy was important to get people to cooperate with us. Redactions doesn't work, but it did not affect our overall investigation, and we punish Stan Snyder. strongly. The Democrats maintain they're not happy with that, that they want to see the report, but it's not coming out, and they maintain that Dan Snyder's never been held accountable. So in a big stirring moment, Tara Maloney said, so we will hold him accountable. We will subpoena him for a deposition next week. Of course, I'm glad she announced it, as we said, Kevin. Dan Snyder is in France. He has passed the territorial power of subpoenaing in America.

If you actually wanted to subpoena Dan Snyder in France, you would need government-to-government cooperation with France. That would take months. The questions would be asked by a French magistrate. So that's obviously not happening. If they wait until Dan Snyder gets back into town, they will subpoena him. We now know exactly what will happen because the Redskins spokesman said today was a farce.

They had pre-convicted Dan Snyder. So the Dan Snyers' orders will move to quash the subpoena. That will be fought for in the district court, in the Corps of Appeals, and then move for certiorary to the Supreme Court. Carol Maloney doesn't have enough time in office and power. So the bottom line, on the big headline that Dan Snyder could be subpoenaed is, Dan Snyder will not appear. So we're left with what happened today. On the one hand, the Democrats expressed clear unhappiness that there were these, the allegations were not, well, they were fully looked at, but the results were not disclosed. And that they've never really punished Dan Snyder enough.

Roger Goodell did a good job of defending the processes by the NFL and also expressing full cooperation on the sexual harassment issue. and by and large, most of the congressmen on the Republican side said this is a farce, and most of the Black Lives Matter movement for farce, and why did you find Jack Del Rio, and the Democrats were playing it straight on sexual harassment rampant at the commanders, and there's still a harasser out there. Yeah, I mean, I think that the Republicans, the primary objective they had more than some of the things that you mentioned was just this is not under our purview. This is not for us to be doing. There are more important things. I mean, this was the, you know, we had the parliamentary, you know,

request at the very beginning from Congressman Donald's. And that seemed to be sort of their overarching theme was, this isn't for us to do. This is a waste of time. This is a political show. And even referencing the fact that, that they had, you know, a table and a chair with Dan Snyder's name on it with a water bottle on it, which really, to me, it's kind of stupid. Like, it starts to diminish the seriousness of what they're trying to get to. Do you agree or disagree? So, Kevin, I had said in an earlier appearance that I suspect they'll have a cardboard cutout of Dan Snyder in that chair.

It's all political theater. Now, remember, the Republicans say, what jurisdiction do we have here? this is political theater, and yet the Republicans held the hearings about steroids and sports. So, whosoever in power uses the chair to conduct political theater. It just happens to be our football team is the subject and the lead actors in the political theater. On a topic that's important, but a topic that luckily, Beth Wilkinson's and Mary Joe White's and the like, can handle except for the fact that the ultimate decision makers are 32 people.

And the really only important question for the listeners, for me and for you, is how many of those 32 people watch this, shake their head again and say, we've got to get rid of this guy, or we can't get rid of this guy, because if he goes out for this, they'll come after me next. Right. So I do want to get to the story that came out this morning about the shadow investigation and Snyder's obsession with trying to essentially pass the buck to everybody else because that came up today. But I want to stick with what you started with, and I didn't intend to do this, but you gave Roger Goodell an A. What would you give the committee in terms of the questions they asked, the statements they made that were more focused on?

the reason they were there, rather than, you know, political expression. Right. So the committee gets a fee generally maybe a D because, although once you have this hearing, the Democrats have to play, oh, my God, there's a sexual harasser on the loose, and the Republicans have to play. The Democrats are holding political theater, and we have important things like inflation and border insecurity. But if you listen to it,

If you listen to it, unless you are a political junkie who can laugh at it, you had to shake your head and say, I can't believe I'm a taxpayer. I can't believe these boobs are representing me. A hundred percent. I sat there through this thing and I said, you know, I can't believe how disorganized they are, how unprepared they are, how poor, in many cases, not all of them, how poor communicators. they are, how slow on their feet they are with responses. And then really and truly, you know, you come to the conclusion that I'm not questioning their intelligence as much as I'm questioning their intent and their communication ability. Their intent is to spend their five minutes on what they've scripted. It's really frustrating to watch a question asked. And every time I ever sit down and watch any of this, it's the same reaction. It's like, you're not. You're not, you. You're

You just asked a question. Let the man actually answer it. But they have no intention most times of letting him answer it because they've got five minutes and they want to get out what they want to get out. It's really, I mean, that's just kind of a personal view of watching this show. Now, specific to the Wilkinson report. And, you know, I even thought it took them forever to get to that. it's like, get to the point here. Like, ask him why they didn't just redact the GD names.

And finally, I think it was Raskin from Maryland who got to it. He's like, well, you could have just redacted the names like you did in the Dolphins investigation. I mean, that was an hour and a half into it. I mean, people messed around with, you know, why they hadn't read. But the key question was you redacted names in the Miami investigation, and you ended up with 143 pages or whatever it was. And why didn't you redact the names here? I thought what I heard from him, and I want you to correct me if I'm wrong, was actually

not what I was expecting. I heard from him that they learned from the Miami situation, essentially, that the process of redacting names doesn't always protect those that come forward that want their names, you know, kept confidential. True or not? That's exactly what he said. That was, I mean, there were two answers that he's not a lawyer, but he was well prepped on. We agreed that the Wilkinson would, that Beth would not write a report because people said they'd come forward if they were never,

their name and a denny was never released. And then we decided that no matter how you redacted, if you tell the story, if you say one front office person or one person on an airplane, that it would be two, identifying and the press would out the people. So we decided, and we've done it before, that no report is the safest way to protect them. So he was well-versed on that. And then the media had so blown that Comus and interest agreement between them. And they said, didn't that mean that Dan Snyder oversaw everything that Beth Wilkinson was doing? And finally, Goodell said, no, we had no obligation to share the information with him, and to the best of my knowledge, she did it without him knowing what she was doing. And I think they're both pretty

strong answers. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, that particular answer, I don't know if he's telling the truth or not, whether Snyder actually had, you know, access to it or whether he was being evasive. But the first part of that particular answer as it relates to the common interest agreement was we needed that agreement in place so that Beth Wilkinson basically didn't have to start her investigation over and interview a bunch of people that she interviewed in the first six weeks when the team was running the investigation. Correct. And so what they did is when they inherited the investigation, which they had to do as soon as

Beth stumbled on allegations specifically against Snyder, originally when there were no allegations against Snyder, the team was conducting investigation. When immediately it came out that there were allegations against Snyder, they had to be removed. Jason Wright probably wisely said, this will do us no good unless the league is in charge of it. Let's transfer it to the league. And instead of making her start over again, they sign the common, if they normally, if they would have shared the work product, that would have waived the attorney-client privilege. So by reaching the common interest agreement, the team could share best work product. They didn't have to reinvent the wheel, and yet the privilege wasn't lost.

but that never meant, and I said that on an earlier appearance, that never meant that both sides were entitled to full access of what was going on. That just meant that if they did give access, it didn't waive the privilege. Best then proceeded with her client being the league and did not share it with Dan Snyder. And how do we know it? We know it because of this misunderstood dossier issue that you brought up. Let me briefly address it, and I suspect only 30 people in town

will address it this way because that's what 30 people in town have done for a living and I did it for 27 years. So if you were representing Dan Snyder and Dan said, look, I've never said a harsh word to any woman. I don't talk

to women. I'm not real good at that. I might have said some stupid things with regard to the guys. And second, I'm not the kind of boss who goes around and tells Larry Michael A or gives the assignments to be. Bruce Allen was part of the clubhouse guys, and now they're going to try and pin it on

me and I was out to lunch. If that's what your client tells him, your job as a lawyer is to build your defense. You've got to find out what people will be saying, figure out why they say it. If you can properly discredit it, you discredit it, and you marshal your defense. Now, the line between marshalling the defense and intimidating and harassing can sometimes be a fine line, but it's an important line. So when people go to testify, you send associates down to see who it is, and then you call them and ask if they would talk to you as well because their information should be available to both sides. But if you lead them to believe they might be fired if they didn't talk to you, you've crossed the line. So most of what the dossier is is defense lawyers preparing a defense for their client.

And if they had access to the materials, they wouldn't have needed to do that. But I think they probably were a little too zealous in trying not to just put a defense together, but maybe crossing or coming too close to that line where people could say and report. And then when the Washington Post reports are unvarnished without talking to defense lawyers, it comes out that Dan had a shadow dossier, otherwise known as defense lawyers preparing their case. Yeah, a 100s, you know, PowerPoint slide dossier with emails, text messages, telephone records, social media posts, journalists, victims, witnesses, etc. I understand what you're saying, but isn't the bigger issue that the league said you're not to do this?

And he did it anyway. The league said you're not to investigate the allegation. Well, here's what I would say when and if they come after me as the defense lawyer. If I'm Dan Snyder, I'll say, my lawyers figured out what we do now. We had no investigation by the commanders about the sexual harassment allegations. We turn them over the league. The lawyers would say, I'm not a private plant in the words of Brendan Sullivan. I was not doing an investigation to give you the results.

I was preparing a defense for my client, and my client's defense was, there was a terrible environment there. Oh, my God, oh my God. Someone tell Vinnie and Bruce and the guys who were in charge. And look, everyone will say the buck went through Vinny and Bruce, and no one will say it's me, and that was my job to prepare the defense. So I'm telling you that's what the lawyers will say they did. That's what they set out to intend to do. whether it looks like they had a shadow investigation that intimidate witnesses,

that's a real risk that you've got to be careful of as a defense attorney. Okay, we jumped ahead here, but I may come back to that, to the shadow investigation, the Snyder dossier, not the steel dossier. We've got a lot of dossiers in town here over the last couple of years, but I want to go back to what you thought of Goodell's answer with respect to redaction. First of all, let's make one thing clear here, right? There is no report to provide to anybody. Right.

There is no report to provide to anybody, although the Washington Post indicates that there were four written reports. What I suspect is those were status reports that I'm up to this part. I've got 12 more witnesses to go. But there was no, here's what we set out to do, and here's what we found, and here's what I recommend. because she was told up front they were going to take the results orally to protect them, according to to Goodell, and he wouldn't be lying about this under oath, at least initially to protect the people who would not have come forward. They wanted no part of this.

They've moved on with their lives. They said, leave me alone, Beth Wilkinson, unless, until she said, look, no one will have a clue that you participate, will keep your name of it, we won't identify you. that's how it originally started. That's how it got there. Does Goodell wish in retrospect that they had never crossed that line that he had a report like the Dolphin report? And if that cost them one or two witnesses, so be it.

Undoubtedly, he wishes that now. But at least the judgment they made back then was the best way to get the key witnesses to testify was to let him know that the only people who will know what happened was Beth Wilkinson, and then there will be a summary that won't identify any who said what to John, who shot John, and the summary will be released, and that their identity will be fully protected. I suspect that's what happened. And then ultimately, in hindsight, if you're as smart as Jamie Raskin and a little bit of law,

you and a good friend and a really good lawyer, you'd say, come on, look what you did with the dolphins. I can redact any report where you can't identify people. Yes, but did you think that was the other part of kind of going back to the redaction part? And, you know, it took them forever again. It's like just ask him, I just was sitting there saying, screaming, ask him why he couldn't just have redacted the names from the report and release a report. Well, A, there wasn't a report, a written report other than, you know, maybe,

but there could potentially be, you know, a Wilkinson, all of her notes comes together in a report. But what I wanted to ask you specific to the redaction is when he answered that, I thought it made sense to me that there could be like if you, when you read things where names are redacted, if you've got enough information, you can put two and two together a lot of the time. And so maybe he learned from that Miami situation that, you know, promising redaction in lieu of just overall confidentiality or release of the report doesn't necessarily work for everybody.

And that makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you? It does. I'll go one step further. Knowing some of the lawyers who represented some of the witnesses, they would have said my clients moved on with their life. They don't want to do it. And if there was an offer of redaction, they would say it always gets out.

You can figure it out. I'm not going to do it, and it may have taken that third level to say there will be no report, so it can't get out to even convince the lawyers representing the witnesses to go forward. Now, not the Deborah Katz witnesses. Deborah Katz offered everybody up because they were going to come public with their allegations in the law courts. But we know there are people involved here whose identity has not been disclosed, and they would have wanted to go nowhere near this. so that may well have been necessary.

And Goodell Clinton even said who they are today because that itself would violate the agreement. That's right. And I mean, even though there are many women who have screamed and hashtag release the report, it doesn't mean, and Goodell mentioned this, there were 150 witnesses in the Wilkinson report. There are many others that wanted and came forward because of the promise of confidentiality. Now, one way to get the report out and disseminated would be to subpoena Beth Wilkinson, and that came up briefly. Just give me, you know, 30 seconds on that possibility.

If they subpoenaed Beth Wilkinson, with Roger Goodell maintaining the position that she was retained not to write a report, she would not say a word without Roger Goodell's permission. everything she said was attorney-client, and her oath matters to her. I know Beth, well, there is no way that if Congress subpoenaed her, she would do anything but a third attorney-client privilege, and if they then move to compel to have her answer over the objection of attorney-client privilege, the House would lose that. Any court would affirm the attorney-client privilege that Beth was saying,

my client hired me with certain parameters. I agreed to them. I've lived to them, and unless they waive them, I'm bound by my oath as an attorney that this is privileged information. Get it from the client or have the client waive the privilege, but if he doesn't, I will not respond, and any court will confirm that assertion of the attorney-client privilege if they subpoena.

If they subpoena, she'll show, but to every question she'll say that's attorney-client privilege. information. What did you make of Maloney's comment, everything and anything in terms of what they could investigate from that committee? Not the best of quotes, right? And she had to backtrack. Right. Look, you know, these people have prepared and prepared what they're looking for is the five minutes they put up on their website that appeals to their election. Except for Representative Donald's, who should have said he was a Dolphin fan, not a Dallas Cowboys fan. And by the way, you know how I know personally that this is a big waste from the country's business?

Because at 11 o'clock today, Representative Donald was supposed to be meeting with me in his office in the hill on dredging, which is actually important to our economy. and to our coastal protection. And he canceled my meeting because he had the hearing. Well, to be honest with you, I think he may have been the best and clearest of communicators

of the whole bunch today. Even if he is a Cowboys fan. I have told his staff that although I'm a Democrat, he had the best appearance by far because he expressed the frustration of us all. Oh, yeah, no doubt. And by the way,

did it very clearly and concisely. I can't believe how many of these people who are representing, you know, lots of people in this country just struggle to make sense when they speak. But, you know, you could tell much of it is because they're sort of disorganized. I thought you were going to say, you know, how serious or lack of serious these people were, is at 11 a.m., it was supposed to start, and it didn't start until 1110. You know, in the private sector, if you call an 11 a.m. meeting, and it's an important meeting that's going to be televised via YouTube and C-SPAN, you should be there at 11 a.m. But that's just me. Let's take a break. Let's take a breath. We've got more to get to, and we will do that with Howard right after these words from a few of our

sponsors. Don't forget to rate us and review us, especially on Apple and Spotify. It's a huge help. Howard Gutman's joining me as we're post-gaming that just concluded Roger Goodell testimony in front of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. We'll bounce around here a little bit longer, and then I'll get the exit question in, which we always ask Howard at the end of these conversations, and that is have they moved the ball further down the field towards Snyder being ousted or not. But I wanted to focus in on the post story this morning, the one that described the shadow investigation, the parallel shadow Snyder investigation, you know, that the Wilkinson investigation was going on and then Snyder's doing his own investigation, the dossier, all that. But there are two paragraphs in here from the Carol Maloney memo that prepared everybody for today's hearing that I wanted to read to you.

Actually, it's the post sort of describing this particular section that I wanted to get your opinion on. It reads as follows. Attorneys representing Snyder provided Wilkinson's firm and the NFL with Allen emails, Bruce Allen emails. An attorney for Snyder identified this specific inappropriate Bruce Allen emails and attempting to demonstrate that Bruce Allen had created a toxic environment at the Washington commanders. Several of those emails subsequently appeared in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, including some in which the then-Las Vegas Raiders head coach John Gruden used racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language over seven years of correspondence with Allen while Gruden worked for ESPN.

I'm wondering what you thought when you read this. It doesn't say this, but I just thought to myself, and I took myself back to October of 2021, when these emails got leaked to the journal and then eventually to the New York Times. Did Snyder leak these emails? I think it's a fascinating part of the story. Let's play this out. So this had died down. The sexual harassment part had died down.

Right. But Dan was still hurting. Dan wanted to say, I haven't been vindicated. And they find the trove of Bruce Allen, John Gruen emails that are misogynist and racist, and they're talking like a couple of cool guy jocks in the locker room. And Danny has the judgment, either Dan or someone close to him. I can't see it as the lead. It's going to come out.

from a Redskins source thinking they were helping Dan or Dan to let people know, see the problem with Bruce Allen thinking, you know, one foot in front of them, not three feet in front of him, that that's going to somehow help Dan. What that does is blow this all back up, gets the congressional investigation set off, which has been the bane of Dan's existence. That leads to John Gruden being sued, John Grude being fired. John Gruden then brings a suit. That suit has survived a motion to dismiss, which means there will be depositions in that case.

If you want to see the earliest time you will hear Dan Snyder under oath, it will not be in the Congress. It will not be under Deborah Katz. It will be in the John Gruden suit against the league for having destroyed his career by weak in these emails. and in that suit, he's going to get Dan's deposition. So the release of those emails might be the thing that ultimately topples Dan and at a minimum led to the Congress, but it set off the chain reaction of not just getting Bruce. Bruce was already dead.

How much did you want to make the rubble bounce? But instead led to the John Gruen suit, and you know who's laughing now? Bruce Allen. Yeah, well, I mean, except for that this group, Cruden case will probably be settled before he's ever deposed. If I were Gruden, if I were Gruden, I would say I take the settlement offer the day after the deposition. Well, I mean, here's the thing, and we've said this before, we said this going back to, you know, last October when these emails leaked.

And, you know, the Wall Street Journal was the first to break it. And that was the guy Andrew Beaton, I think his name was, who had written just an incredibly outrageous. puff piece on Snyder like four or five months earlier and you know connecting the dots or like maybe it was Snyder it would be so typical of him you know to have essentially summarined himself because as you said for all intents and purposes the discussion of the toxic workplace was dead and over and he resuscitated it if he was the one that leaked the emails um there was another part of this. At the very end, the ranking member said that there were two more questions that they did not get a chance to ask the commissioner, that they were going to submit to him in writing. And it dealt

with a Loretta Lynch investigation of one of the minority shareholders. I am pretty sure that that would be Dwight Schar. I don't know that. I'm just, I'm connecting the dots on the Snyder. the part that you and I talked about from the very jump, be careful, be careful people, because all of a sudden you could create some empathy for Snyder. Well, Dwight Schar, I think it's very clear that certainly there was something untoward about this relationship with this Indian company

and the Jeffrey Epstein rumors that came out in July 2020 right before the Post story came out that really had Snyder on. the offensive, defensive, and offensive. And did you catch that at the very end? Because it was almost as if to say Snyder's going to be vindicated on some of this stuff. And it's really important because if you're Dan sitting there and saying, I wish Gutman would stop talking to Sheehan and making me sound guilty,

here's the perspective from his side. From his side, he's been accused of everything from being, you know, Jeffrey Epstein's best guy. uh... to whatever and most of that was launched by his enemies or at best people who would love to see him toppled like Dwight Schar who was trying to bid up his minority interest so uh... or whether it's Dwight Schar or Sally Jenkins I want to equate them but we don't we know that Sally's a fabulous sports right but you're not going to see a piece tomorrow called the best side of Dan Snyder if she's got her right she's going to write one-sided and Dan says

people are only looking at that part of the coin. I've got to prove it. I've got to show that this is a bunch of rumor innuendo about a guy who did nothing, but maybe was too jocular, but did nothing in sexual harassment, no financial and propriety, no Jeffrey Epstein. So my lawyers are going to put together my defense. And as it turned out, that venue, the fact that the Indian paper defamed him gave a venue to try to take discovery.

Right. In my day, in my day, if you had a criminal investigation and you couldn't, therefore, find out what the government was finding out in the grand jury, that secret, you would file an FOIA suit, a Freedom Information Act suit, and try to get the witnesses to pose that way. Yes, it's not really because of the freedom information, but because you wanted to get the witness's testimony, what I said before. So the Indian lawsuit opened up the ability of the defense attorneys to start asking deposition questions and sending interritories to these witnesses.

And while they're at it, they could then find out who's badmouting Dan in which way with which motivation to Beth Wilkinson. That leads to the intimidation, which looks stepping back, the Dwight-Shar Indian thing has led to the potential impropriety or proper defense, depending on how you're. regard it by Dan's lawyers, which is Dan. And so that question about whether the Indian suit was valid, whether Dan was a victim here, and to give him his credit, I do not believe that Dan Snyder and Jeffrey Epstein were involved and the like. So that guy was getting sullied and had a right to figure out by who. That's right.

It's just, yes, it's just that aggressive defense lawyers will take that and say, why don't we start fighting now? Who's saying what? Generally, that's our job. That bleeds into intimidation. If you have a Democrat Congress looking after the fact of what you're doing and you have the Washington Post looking after the fact of what you're doing, what you've done is you've assembled a secret dossier.

Dossier is probably the most sinister word in our language these days. So once there's a dossier, there's a problem somewhere. Yeah, the other thing, too, and this was at the very end, The comment from the ranking member was also that, you know, this particular minority shareholder, Dwight Schar, has been prohibited from ever owning any stake, any equity stake in an NFL team again. And Loretta Lynch was essentially hired by the league to investigate this, you know, this stuff that came at Snyder, that Snyder is absolutely convinced. was meant to, you know, smear him. And so the league, you know, has Mary Joe White investigating Snyder for the Tiffany Johnson stuff for the allegations and accusations that Jason Friedman made.

They had Beth Wilkinson investigating the toxic workplace. And then they've also got Loretta Lynch investigating on his behalf, you know, people that may have smeared him like a former minority shareholder, Dwight Schar. And indeed, that's the easiest one for Goodell and the owners, because don't be a minority owner in the league and try to blackmail an owner to get your shares up by creating rumors everywhere, taking down the whole league. So if that's what Dwight Shore did, and that's what Loretta Lynch has investigated, and we can sort of conclude based on the lifetime ban, that one isn't about sexual residence. And that's old, dirty business. And dirty business, the NFL knows exactly how to handle, and Dwight would be out there. It's kind of lucky that they finally negotiated a settlement, but Dwight was trying to force the league to force the sale of the team. In the context of the sale of the whole team, Dwight's minority interest would have been worth probably double.

All right. before I ask you the key question, which is part of all of our conversations about this, what have we missed? I know there's a lot of things that were said. And, you know, I'm just looking through my notes. First of all, I just made the note that nobody could get anybody's name right. You know, it was Schneider a couple of times. It was Lafamena.

It was Goodell. I mean, they just couldn't get any of the name pronunciations right. But whatever. They're not, you know, not everybody there is familiar with the figures that were coming before them. But before I ask you the important question, which is, has anything over the last 24 hours, you know, post reports, you know, the dossier, the shadow investigation, the Goodell testimony actually, you know, furthered the possibility or enhanced the possibility of Snyder being ousted. Did I miss any other truly key moments from the two hours and 45 minutes or whatever it was? Here's what I think might be the most important for fans, which is if you're Ron Rivera, you're reading a club of largely black men, you're a minority in the background,

you watch George Floyd, and you rally to them and said, we have your back. And then your defensive coordinator doesn't recognize that he has to inspire young black man. So he says something that is counterproductive to the team. And the team has to say, look, we've got your back players. We're there. We're not talking about that.

We're there. And then he gets criticized by Republican congressman. And Roger Goodell has to come to his support. I just worry at some point, A, the smaller worry, how much of a decision. distraction is this from actually signing a friggin' middle line backer. And B, at some point, if you're Ron Rivera, you say, who needs this madhouse? Because he is a good man. We can all agree whether you agree with every football decision, every personnel decision,

he's a darn good man. And you are damned if you do and damned if you don't in this organization. And he just wants to be a football coach. And so I think Goodell did a great job, a great job of things. standing up and saying, I'm not getting into the Del Rio fine, but when the Republican congressman tried to say, this is all wokeism, and how can your league support fines of people who exercise the First Amendment? And Goodell said, look, there are consequences. If you read black men and you hurt the team morale, the team has to be on the side of its players. He didn't

quite say that. I'm not getting into that, but I think Ron Rivera is a good man. But we had Republican congressman attacking our coach for trying to hold his team together. And at what point does Ron Rivera say, you know what, life's too short. And if he doesn't say it, and I'm saying now, I hope someone plays this, stick in, you do a heck of a job. But how much of a distraction? Did he need this today? Did he need to focus on this today?

The one group that's being most cheated by all of this and the best reason for Dan to step aside would be when you make that speech that you actually mean when you say, you know, I've become a distraction. And if I truly love this ball club and this city, that even if it's not of my own doing, I won't take that responsibility. The one thing we shouldn't have is a distraction. We should have a middle linebacker. Yeah, that just requires too much self-awareness.

And I don't think he has much of it at all. And that's the problem, because we've been talking about this for, you know, several years now, not necessarily you and I, but me and many others, at what point does he just say, I'm not having any fun, I'm despised. Everybody, you know, even if he believes everybody's out to get me, what's in the best interest of my family, perhaps, is to just sell the damn team for five and a half to six billion dollars right now. But I just, I think he's a, you know, dig heels in further, you know, cornered fighter.

I mean, I respect that on one level for sure. But obviously, it's not something that is beneficial to the people that are in his organization or the people that are rooting for his organization or the people, more importantly, that used to root for his organization. Because the best thing that could happen to this franchise is for him to sell the team. team. The number one, best thing that could happen to this franchise is for him to choose to sell the team. So with that, perfect segue, has anything that's happened here over the last 24 hours or so increase the possibility that he's voted out or increase the possibility that he decides to just sell? remember the jury is not the American public the jury is not the people who watch this it's not the Dems it's not the Republicans it's 32 owners of the teams in the league the magic number you know when some juries you need unanimity out of 12 and some you just need nine well here you need 24 and certainly there was no one today who said I previously supported throwing out, Dan, but now I'm going to keep him. He didn't get a vote in his favor

today. The question is, where are we on that magic 24 meter? And did people get added to it? And I assure you, there were parts of him today where Roger Goodell said, how many more do I need to get rid of this guy and move on? But we just don't know if that number we're up to is four or 23. But if you get to 24 or you get close to 24, Dan would have to realize if he's going to achieve his value, he needs to sell before you hit 24, and we just need better reporting to know what the different owners would say. So the key is for the Washington Press to get other owners on saying, why would you vote to get rid of this guy and see if you can get an answer? But we just don't know where that number is. But his case wasn't helped. Does this pass? He'll get a subpoena. He won't have. He won't

pier so that's not there but we will have the john gruden litigation does that get settled before more depositions does dan throw in a couple of million if it avoids his deposition um and where does it spin from there uh if you ever think it's over you haven't been in this town long enough no that's true and actually uh i got to give it up for one of the squad members because rscied at lieb actually asked the question will you remove him as the owner and the commissioner said, I don't have the authority, you said,

I don't have the authority to remove him, which he doesn't. Right. Well, stay tuned, I guess. I mean, because what you just said about the Gruden thing and what you just said, if you think that it's over,

you haven't been living here long, that's where Ron Rivera, I'm sure, goes home and looks at Stephanie and says, this never ends. And guess what, Ron, it never will as long as he owns the team. You know, one last thought that I wanted to share with you that I just wanted your reaction to. In reading through that 29-page memo from Carol Maloney to everybody that was

attending, you know, the thing that the post got access to, which led to their story on the shadow investigation, et cetera. I just, I had this thought that this guy Snyder is really borderline unhinged right now. He is so hell-bent on proving that none of this has been his fault, which has always been his MO. But, you know, he's targeting journalists. There's a whole section in this thing about, you know, the dossier targeting journalists like Liz Clark and Will Hobson and Beth Reinhardt, targeting the victims and the whistleblowers, you know, going after Bruce Allen, trying to intimidate and silence witnesses potentially. I just kind of have this thought that this guy has kind of gone off the rails a little bit.

What do you think? And so, look, I am amazed that he is withstood it. He has become the most vilified person in Washington when he wants to be the most beloved. And he's sitting there saying, and I've never harassed anybody. Sure, I called a guy gay because he don't like, you don't like cheerleers, but I never harassed anybody. The next thing I know is Jeffrey Epstein. And the more he tries to dig out of that, the number one thing you tell your client is when you were in a hole, stop digging. Let the professionals handle it.

And don't scream them to overdo it. Let me call the shots. I will go this far, but I'm not going to be looked at for witness intimidation. I'm going to let the league know I'm doing it. we're going to cooperate. But if he had that kind of judgment, he would have that judgment when he bought the team years ago. We would have a heck of a lot more Super Bowls,

and we'd have a heck of a good stadium now. I think that's not the man. You know, I know that this probably gets nauseating for people to hear me keep repeating this, but I'm still completely baffled by the whole idea that this is Bruce Allen's fault, and yet most of what we're discussing happened before Bruce Allen got here. And nobody seems to have put their fingers on the calendar there. Snyder trying to blame everything on Bruce Allen saying he was hands off. And yet most of what we're talking about here, going back to the 42 women in the two post stories, pre Bruce Allen,

pre Bruce Allen 2010, when Snyder had his hands all over everything, at least compared to the last 10 years. I don't know why, you know, Congress or anybody else doesn't really bring that up. And maybe somebody should bring it up to him. You know, you're in a hole stop digging. Stop talking about Bruce Allen. Most of this shit happened long before Bruce got here and was with you. Goodell hit it on the head. He said there was, and so that's how we know best of their job.

Because what rings the most true was the bullying and the, and the, you know, being out to lunch personally, not necessarily the harassment there, and that just strikes from the person we've seen for the 20 years. Thank you, as always. I will talk to you soon. Have a good rest of the week. And maybe you get that meeting with Donald's tomorrow. Will it happen tomorrow? Did you reschedule? I've asked to meet with him. The problem is I may have to drive to Naples, Florida, the next time in Miami. I've asked to meet with him.

he was by far and away the most impressive communicator of the whole bunch whether you agree with his politics or what he said he got his point across pretty concisely thank you i'll talk to you soon all the best take care all right that's it for the show today thanks to howard i am off tomorrow i think i mentioned yesterday i'm thrilled about it um i have a colonoscopy uh tomorrow but i'll be back on friday