The Kevin Sheehan Show - Washington-Giants Look Ahead Number

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

Kevin opened with the look-ahead line for next week's huge rematch with the Giants in Landover. The oddsmakers have changed their minds on the differences between the two teams. Kevin will explain. Howard Gutman jumped on with his experienced insight on the House Oversight/Reform Report.  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 Cheehan Show. He is Kevin. A special weekend podcast because I missed the Thursday podcast. I am benefiting by doing this podcast on Saturday because Howard Gutman is available to us. He was out of the country.

Couldn't do anything on Thursday or Friday, but he is going to join me here shortly. And we're going to get his valuable perspective. on the House Oversight and Reform Committee's final report on the investigation into the Washington team workplace. So that is coming up in just a couple of minutes. The show today is brought to you by MyBooky. Go to MyBooky.orgie. Use my promo code, Kevin D.C., and they'll match your first deposit, dollar for dollar, all the way up to $1,000. Very few places are just handing you cash.

All right, you should take it. Use my promo code, Kevin D.C. at mybooky.orgie.ag. They've got every kind of sports betting opportunity that you need. Fair point spreads, fair lines. And as I've said many, many times, if you're doing this and you have just one site, you're doing it wrong. Okay, you should be trying to find the best possible point spreads. There's a big difference between plus two and a half and plus three on an NFL game. or a college football game, if you have to buy that half point from plus two and a half to plus three, it can get expensive. So if MyBooky's got a plus three on a game and your site has a plus two and a half, use My Booky as a way to comparison shop on all of those key numbers and pricing as well. You know, my bookie's not overcharging you for a loss. There are a lot of sites, a lot of new sites out there that are doing that. By the way, at MyBooky, I wanted to give you a quick piece of information that's interesting.

So they have next week's point spreads already up. They are look-ahead lines, really, but you can bet the game, next Sunday night's game at FedEx Field, right now if you want to bet it. The line for next Sunday night is Washington minus four. That's an interesting line to me because last week in the Meadowlands, the odds makers viewed Washington as a road two and a half point favorite. Now, you know, it was fluctuating between, you know, I saw some one and a halfs,

twos, two and a halves. I saw some threes at one point, but if you just take the two and a half number and we use that as, you know, an opportunity that you had to lay two and a half or to buy two and a half by the half point to get the Giants plus three. but if that was the number two and a half, what does that mean with respect to the line next week? Well, it means that last week had they played the game on a neutral field, Washington would have been a five and a half point favorite because you get three points for being the home team. The Giants get three points for being the home team at the Meadowlands. Washington doesn't get that assessment of three points for being a home team because the home field advantage is much inferior.

and Landover than it is in much of the rest of the NFL. But if that game last week had been played on a neutral field, then Washington would have been a five and a half point favorite. If next week's game was played on a neutral field, and you consider FedEx Field to be worth two points, not three, Washington would be only a two-point favorite. So there is a difference in the way the odds makers are looking at the game next week versus the way they looked at the game last week.

Last week they thought Washington was the clear better team. Next week, they think they are just slightly the better team. So interesting there. But my bookie.ag, Kevin, D.C. is the promo code. If there's something already written in the promo code area, erase it and write Kevin D.C. By the way, there is some news on next week's game because the news exists on the giant game for tomorrow against Philadelphia. Sequin Barclay has been downgraded to questionable with a neck injury that he suffered last week. And Leonard Williams may be out altogether.

Leonard Williams missed much of the fourth quarter last week, and that was a big benefit to Washington. because Williams and Dexter Lawrence are a pretty good defensive tackle combination. They're not Allen and Payne, but they're pretty damn good. And by the way, with Tibido and O'Jolari being back last week, their front fours pretty good. But Leonard Williams would be a big miss. So we'll watch tomorrow to see if Barclay plays, but it would be interesting if this were a more serious injury because the Giants are a completely different team without Saquan Barkley.

Completely different. Another quick thing on next week's game. I know that I am the weather watcher of sports content providers in town. Many of you know that I do like sort of winter weather. The pattern is going to change here in our area, the Mid-Atlantic. At least that's what's being advertised, starting kind of late next week and then continuing through the holidays. What does that mean for next Sunday night? It means. It means. means that cold weather will be here for sure. And there is a chance a couple of days before and maybe a day or two after of some winter weather in the form of like snow or ice. Right now, it doesn't look that way necessarily for Sunday night, but cold is more likely than not the temperature situation versus something more mild, which we're capable of having in mid to late December. So they are, the weather guys are talking about with the longer range forecasts of a pattern change to a more winter weather pattern starting kind of late next week. So there you go. I've given you the look ahead line on next week, some potential key

injuries to the giants, and even in early forecasts, which I would say cold. I wouldn't say cold and snow or ice, just cold for right now. By the way, one question, quick thing before we get to Howard. The Wizards lost last night to the Pacers. They've now, they've now lost five games in a row. Tonight, at Capital One Arena, John Wall returns, and he's going to start his first game for the Clippers. For the Clippers. They're going to rest Reggie Jackson, their starting point guard, and Wall is going to start against his former team. But he told ESPN last week, in an interview, that he really doesn't want it to be about him.

He wants it to be about the team. He doesn't want the team to play any differently and try to feed him the ball or anything like that. And he also said the following. He said, quote, there are going to be a lot of emotions, a lot of cheers every time I touch the ball, score the ball,

but I just want to walk away with a win. That's the most important thing to me, closed quote. I think he is going to be cheered in a major way. And I think he deserves to be cheered. The era of John Wall and Bradley Beale and some of the teams they had, in my opinion, those were the teams that threatened deep into the playoffs much more than the Karan-Antoine-Gilbert Arena's team or, you know, the Weber Howard, you know, one-year wonder. You know, really the Wizards slash bullets with all of these lean years. The closest they've been to the Eastern Conference finals was the year in which Wall got hurt against the Hawks and they lost a six-game series.

And then in 2017, when they lost to the Celtics in the second round in 2017. They won some series with John Wall. There was a moment with John Wall in game six against Boston when he stood up on the scorers table after knocking down the game winner, screaming, this is my town. But welcome back, John Wall. I like the Clippers because Kauai Leonard is my favorite player in the NBA, if not my favorite player in sports. And he is supposed to play tonight. Anyway, up next, Howard Gutman will join us right after these words from a few of our sponsors.

All right, let's bring on our good friend Howard Gutman. Howard, of course, the former ambassador to Belgium during the Obama. Obama year is a prominent long-time DC attorney. Howard hosts a show on W.R.VA radio down in Richmond on Saturday mornings, but you can also download that show or listen to it via the Odyssey app. The name of the show is As I See It. So, I know you've been away, but I know you've been following the news this week of the House Oversight and Reform Committee's report that they finally put out with even a longer report from the Republicans. So I was very interested

in your take on it, and I think a lot of our listeners are as well, so I'll let you have the floor here. Go ahead. Well, thanks, Kevin. Let's get three preliminaries out of the way, but then I think Dan Schneider really

benefited from the last few days in four ways. So, preliminaries. First, there was serious workplace harassment. No one is minimizing it. It was horrendous. You won't want your daughter, your wife, to have been, to go to work every day, to be an accountant for a business, and to put up with comments and to put up with what went on.

So there is no way, no one is minimizing that. Second, there's not an issue. There hasn't been an issue for a year, for five years, or for decades that Dan Snyder is not a good guy. He's more of a bully, a frat follower than a personal sexual harasser. he didn't know how to lead a team to lead a business. If we had the roomies or Mike Tomlin or Rivera or a mensch in the room, a grown-up anywhere running the business, none of this would have happened. So the blame is plainly at his feet.

And third, I thought the stuff that was kind of, let's call it in the Dan, in the Ron Rivera Parliens, interesting but not important, was the most interesting stuff for fans, the Carson Wentry action, the Trent Williams, story, although I don't believe Bruce Allen for a minute on that Trent Williams story, and then the story about, or at least the surmise about how the Bruce Allen emails got leaked and what effect that might have on the John Gruden suit. Put those out of the way. I think Dan Snyder got helped a great deal in four ways, though thinking about Dan, he's probably not

going to be smart enough to take advantage of it. But to the extent I've heard lots of people We'll talk in the last few days of what was said and kind of think by virtue of it being said that it hurt Dan. But let me tell at least how I see it first. Ultimately, we learned nothing new from the Hill, from the report. There was nothing in there other than the interesting but not important for Dan. Nothing about Dan. After all that was done, after all the access they had that we hadn't heard before, that either Neil or I or you have talked about on this program.

So if you supported Dan Snyder before, you can still do so. You learned nothing new. And if you were against Dan Snyder before, you remained against him. There was nothing new. This is like the 46 pro-Trump, 46 against Trump. Nothing changes their mind. Well, that's what happened this time. But it's like a company, where if a company,

has been under investigation for months and months. When the indictment finally comes out, their stock rises. The worst has been built into the stock. And when you see the indictment and you realize that's it, that's all there is. Their stock goes up. Dan had that kind of good day because the Jerry Joneses of the world and the Roger Goodell's of the world didn't no longer have to worry what else might come up. We have seen it. That's all there is. So point number one for Dan. Second, to be fair, the Democrats plainly overstepped in the report. It is a bit of a hatchet job.

So we know, for example, they say, for example, that Dan brought the federal lawsuit for defamation against the Indian newspaper just as an excuse to derail the Beth Wilkinson investigation. That is nonsense. We know he was being. linked now by Dwight Schar, we know, as being part of the Jeffrey Epstein crew. There wasn't a single allegation that you couldn't level against this guy that wasn't being leveled by that Indian newspaper being fed by Dwight Schar. And if I was Dan Snyder, I would have hired every lawyer

and investigator to get to the bomb of it, to expose it. And the NFL threw Dwight Schar out of the league and banned him from the league for what he did in trying to dirty up Dan Snyder as a way to sell his minority interest. That wasn't a pretense. That investigation wasn't a pretense. Having investigators out there trying to figure out who's talking to Dwight Schar and what Bruce Allen's doing, that's legal practice. And so, A, the Democrats have overstepped there. They overstepped their characterization of fight night. We talked about that, before. And what the report says, the report says, the post also reported allegations that Mr. Snyder had personally propositioned the former cheerleader during a charity fundraiser

on behalf of the team official ophthalmologist. We know for a fact he didn't proposition anyone. He said that he had a sweet like everybody does at fight night and you could stop up for a drink. that just, I get invited to 20 of them at every fight night. Nobody's propositioning Howard Gutman, I assure you. Then they went to allegations like he took binoculars and looked at the cheerleaders. There he's the first guy in the history of the world to bring binoculars to the game and to focus on the cheerleaders. Right.

So once we get to this, right? Once we get to this level, there isn't a lot of there, but the fact that they went there showed that they were really trying to dirty this guy up. So, first of all, we weren't nothing new. Second of all, you could see their overreaching. Third, tactically, they made the same mistake that D.C. Attorney General made. They equally or more so attacked the NFL and lumped them in with Snyder. So now the NFL has to push back against the House Dems.

They have to side with the House Republicans. They can't point the finger at Dan Kettle. Dan Snyder, it's the pot and the kettle. And so, if you are an owner, you now, if your instinct was to look at a report slamming Dan Snyder and to attack Dan Snyder, forget that instinct. You had to look at that report and say this was hogwash because it put you in that same position. So again, if Dan could have written a report if he thought about, it would be one that disclosed,

nothing new, that overreached in its allegations, that lumped the end. NFL with him. And lastly, but I assure you, Dan is not smart enough for this one. The entire what's gone on in the last two years, the Katz law firm, the congressional investigation, the Washington Post suits, articles, the lawsuits, everything we've talked about, that has probably earned as far as I can tell, Dan, Snyder about $2 billion. Because the way teams normally get sold is the owner decides to sell it, and then the price is decided by the highest bidder.

But if that were the case, there won't be anybody but Jeff Bezos, going above four and a half, you know, sort of the Denver world, a little bit more valuable than Denver, maybe five and a half. But Dan Snyder doesn't want to sell. Dan Snyder's now being forced to sell from all this nonsense. So he can say, I don't care if the second bidder's four and a half. If you want me out, get me $7 billion, and Dezos will pay the seven. So I think the circumstances have been created while a nightmare for the Snyder family,

if there's nothing that's a criminal referral, nothing that's a lasting civil suit, he just probably made an extra $2 billion for all this. The next thing, what the thing that's most upsetting for me is that this was a wasted opportunity. We still have no idea how cheerleaders on 32 other squads felt. None. I have a sense how they felt. I guarantee you people pick up binoculars and check out the cheerleaders at 32 stadiums, not at one. I guarantee you that locker rooms that were former college quarterback stars turned pro rich guys with cheerleaders with too much hairspray have been a nightmare, much like the movie industry, much like the brutal chefs in kitchens.

But we had a look at this issue, and we never found out any facts. We never learned anything. So what we learned is Congress embarrassed itself as much as it embarrassed Dan Snyder. And when it's all said and done, not only did they spend all this time looking at a problem that actually has a serious element, they did not even look at the serious element. We still don't know how to clean up sports. Let me say the last thing. Dan Snyer doesn't deserve to own the team,

but because he's committed one real offense, he is not the first successful entrepreneur to act like a total putts. Most of those Get Rich Click, Travis Kalanick at Uber was not a kind of guy you would look up to. The Get Rich Click, they think they're somehow earned it. That happens. That occurs.

He's not the first guy in sports to tolerate a jock, a jock and offensive and abusive atmosphere. The reason Dan deserves it is he still doesn't get it. He still doesn't understand what Dan's done wrong. He still thinks this is about him as a victim. And at that point, if you don't get it at this point, if it's 2022, and you haven't heard what's been said loud and clearly. You can just never get it. Dan Snyder, the problem isn't that he was an over-self-impressed entrepreneur

who got successful before his time and acted like an idiot and a jock. It's that he still hasn't grown up. And for that reason, someone else needs to have this club. So you nailed it in so many ways. Although I do have a question about one of the four bullet points on your list. of the things that Snyder benefited from courtesy of the report. And I'll get to that here in a minute. But adding to or I guess kind of emphasizing what you just said,

while he may not and probably wasn't any of the things that typically cost you, you know, a sports franchise, a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, someone who was directly involved in sexual harassment, you know, something other than the he said, she said. the organization was obviously an organization which he oversaw responsible for this horrible, toxic workplace for women. And I would guess that the organizational bullying that we've heard so much about was probably more closely aligned with the kind of owner he was.

And that kind of behavior was taken from the top and tolerated throughout the company. But like we always guessed and suspected, you know, these investigations, were more likely than not, we weren't going to see something unearthed in the form of a smoking gun. But what he was, as you just pointed out, and is more than anything

else, he is just someone who lacks so much. You know, self-awareness, the inability to read the room. He's a follower, you know, overly impressed with kind of the jock crowd that he was never around more likely than not before he became an

owner. He wasn't a leader. And this is actually what I want to kind of follow up on here, because I think it's what eventually doomed him, because he was unable at any point, as we've seen over the years, to accept responsibility. You know, it's always been someone else's fault. And he really stepped in it with these leaked emails. That's the number one thing, Howard, that came out of this for me from the report. You know, we've always thought that there was a a strong possibility that he or someone else on his behalf leaked the Bruce Allen emails to the Wall Street Journal, to the New York Times.

But in this report, Lisa Friel from the league told Bruce that the team was responsible for the leaks. Now, if Lisa was telling Bruce the truth and Bruce wasn't perjuring himself, then ultimately Dan, Dan did himself in with these leaked emails, you know, because of his impulsivity, because he's not very strategic, he never thinks about cause and effect. You know, the leaking of the emails is the root of where the congressional investigation came from. You know, it started a week after the leaked emails. And from that came the roundtable that produced Jason Friedman and his allegations and the Tiffany Johnston allegation,

which then led to the Mary Joe White investigation and the Attorney General Investigation, and three different jurisdictions. And then the Eastern District of Virginia's criminal investigation, all of these investigations. The story had gone from borderline in hibernation to this, what we've seen since the day the emails leaked. His desire to bury Bruce so that everyone could see what a bad person Bruce Allen was. the bottom line is for me, and it was kind of my number one takeaway, is he just ended up burying himself. But before you respond to that, do you think that we learned, you know, at least almost for sure, that the leaks did come from him or someone with the team?

So we learned that it's probably from the team side, and they are condemnable for that, but not enough that it was Dan that anyone could claim perjury by Dan. So yes, it's probably Dan. And the first rule I always advise clients in 27 years is when you are in a hole, stop digging. Dan has never learned that at all. He just, you know, not at all.

But here's an interesting part of that. Everyone's saying, what a great day for John Gruden. Well, here's the defense I would run, I were the commanders, if I were Dan Snyder. I would say I committed no tortious interference with regard to John Gruden. I didn't want to hurt John Gruden in the least. I didn't care at all about John Gruden. He was collateral damage.

I was trying to discredit Bruce Allen to defend myself because Bruce Allen is the kind of guy to trade nude pictures and dirty jokes, and I needed to let people know that. Sorry, John, you were just on the email train. If Bruce Allen wanted to come after me, here I am, because he is to blame for this. And you just happen to be collateral damage in an investigation I did not initiate. He is to blame for what? Well, to the extent that they can show that the week of the emails goes all the way to Dan, which we haven't gotten yet, Dan's defense to John Gruden would be, I did nothing with regard

to trying to hurt you. Right, right. These emails existed, and I had to put him out for Bruce Allen. Right, but when you, right, when you, but you, I thought you were implying that maybe these emails were some way, you know, there to prove that Bruce Allen essentially was the cause of this horrible culture. Yes. So, Kevin, here's an interesting point.

You've always made the point that it's obviously not Bruce Allen, who was the cause of this culture, because it existed so long before Bruce Allen that most of these acts. That is true, but Dan's position is true. You know, there are so many facts here that everyone can say something, and they're all true. So I have no doubt that when Bruce was here, and if Bruce is the kind to share, you know, back then when you'd get, one a day from your knucklehead buddy who would send pictures or a dirty joke or something and you said, look, this is my work email and you had to then, you know, bar them from sending stuff to you and you had, I had no doubt that Bruce was part of that. And Dan instead of being the adult in the room and saying, there shall be none of this, Dan would laugh at them. I have no doubt that

if he saw them, he would likely laugh at them. But during that period, he probably looked up to Bruce. Dan is the kind who says, I want to hang with the football player. I'm on my plane. I'm always the richest guy in the room. I control it. But look, the Redskins, the general manager, the stars, they're part of my toys. They make me feel good about myself.

So he would be a running mate of Bruce Allen. In his mind, the bad culture during the Allen time was because of Allen, instead of getting the message that this is your football team. You start the way the Roosies would start and say, this is a professional organization that respects women, minorities, gays, and we'll have none of this. And so it's not enough to say Bruce was doing it. Of course, he knew Bruce was doing it. you have to therefore bear responsibility. But I have no doubt that he truly believes that during the Bruce Allen period, the culture was determined by Bruce Allen because he was one of Bruce's frat boys.

Right. Well, he was, you know, he was a follower. He was not a leader. But I do want to just get your reaction to what I said before, which is that, you know, the root cause of where we are today with him, we believe, going through the process of, of selling the team where the owners finally got to the point, maybe his family got to the point,

and everybody just got to the point where enough was enough, that the root cause of this was the emails. You know, again, we always had this sense that he could have been the leak because of the tie to Andrew Beaton at the Wall Street Journal and the person who would come to work for the team that was from the Wall Street Journal and that, you know, Beaton had written that puff piece on him a few months earlier. I mean, Tommy connected the dots almost immediately. He's like, man, this has to be from the team,

because this is the guy that ran that embarrassing puff piece on Snyder a few months ago. But I just want your reaction to, you know, basically the root cause of all of this was something that he did, maybe in a fit of rage, who knows, but said, God damn it, let's make sure we bury Bruce publicly with these emails. get them out there to the journal, get them out there to the Times. I'm not saying that something else it wouldn't have happened, but everything stemmed from that one decision. Some grown-up lawyer needed to tell Dan Snyder, you do not help yourself when you keep the redskins in the news

for anything other than a victory. You forget this. You just speak well of others, that it's unfortunate what happened to Larry Michael, it's unfortunate about Alex Santos. People made mistakes, but you feel terrible for their victims, and you will do all you can to make amends,

and otherwise keep your head down, stop digging, speak little, and when spoken, it's to congratulate others, let others get some gory, and hope that when Kevin Sheehan or Al Galdi have conversations in the morning, it's about your middle linebacker and not about the last new picture that someone else sent.

But as we've seen through the years, he's incapable of sort of operating in that mature way. And, you know, again, not to beat a dead horse. I mean, this thing ultimately just doomed him. It's just incredible what came out of these leaked emails. And I doubt that he ever thought anything other, Howard, than this is going to make Bruce look awful, and everybody's going to now understand that it was Bruce's fault. If Dan looks back one day when he's on his boat with his $7 billion and said, what went wrong, Dan has no one to blame but himself, no question.

And this was among the pantheon of stupid maneuvers to let those emails out if he knew of it. But he just couldn't get past the end of his nose that said, if I can blame Bruce, I'm off the hook. That was a 60-second analysis when he was playing a game of chess. Another thing that I wanted you to address, which you didn't address, and I still have something that I want to push back on a little bit on one of the four points you made in terms of what benefited Snyder from the report. But with respect to what we learned specifically about the 10 million,

fine. You were on this from the jump. Right after he was fined, I remember you said on this podcast, you said he didn't get fined. He will just essentially rearrange the charitable donation deck chairs and send this $10 million off to charity and they'll end up getting tax deductions. This will actually be a break for the team. And sure enough, I mean, we've, you know, surmise that over a long period of time, that that's how that played out. And in this report, it was described that five million went back to the league and five million essentially was a tax deductible benefit for the team. And again, you know, this is another area in which he just boomeranged himself. If he had just begged for a legitimate punishment, find me, suspend me,

Let's put some teeth to this thing so that people don't perceive it to be a slap on the wrist. But he couldn't do it. He was incapable of it because, again, like you've said, and like we've been saying for years now, it was never his fault. He was the victim. And so he had his lawyers calling people in the media like Tommy and saying, hey, just so you know, Dan wasn't fine, the team was. And Dan was not suspended despite the perception that Tanya,

being elevated to this co-CEO role means that he was quasi-suspended. It's just another example of, you know, an area in which, you know, as you said, one day he may be looking back on this. If he's able to constructively critique the mistakes, this was another one. If Dan had that kind of judgment, if he was not just full of hubris, we would never have gotten there. Dan believes today that if the fine had been, if the charitable contribution had been 7 million, not 10,

people would have thought he's $3 million better of a guy. He just doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. Right. I want to get to a pushback on one of the points that you made, but we need to take a break. So we'll do that, and we'll be back with Howard right after these words from a few of our sponsors.

I want to get to point number two that you made when you were listing your four reasons why Dan Snyder benefited from the congressional report. And it was, you know, you mentioned that Democrats clearly overstepped. And I think we've all felt from the beginning that, you know, anybody I think that thinks logically and objectively or as objectively as you can, you've understood this to be political theater. You've understood this to be very politically charged, and you pointed that out. But when you were going through that, you said that these private investigators were absolutely necessary for the purposes of defending himself against that India media-based smear campaign, which I think we all understand now, you know, Dwight Schar was behind. I mean, Dwight Schar has been banned from ever owning.

any equity in an NFL team. And, you know, from the beginning, I've said, you've said, we've had this conversation, Dan should be pissed, and he should defend himself in any way, shape, or form that he can against these heinous allegations that spread like wildfire in the days before that first post story came out in July 2020. I mean, he was linked with, you know, Jeffrey Epstein for crying out loud. linked with, you know, drug parties and sex parties and the whole thing. So no disagreement that, of course, you know, he had every right and should have gone after the sources of this smear campaign.

However, my pushback on this would be that these private investigators didn't just investigate people that could have been tied to the smear campaign. These were also people that ended up being tailed or investigated as potential witnesses in the Wilkinson investigation or even potential witnesses, you know, in the congressional oversight and reform committee investigation. I mean, you kind of get all these investigations mixed up. But the point is, you know, Dan actually said at one point, I, you know, that was the point of using the private investigators. It wasn't to run a shadow investigation. but there's the possibility that some of the investigators ended up tailing people that weren't necessarily obvious targets for the smear campaigns. So I guess a long way of getting to, don't you think that, you know, this report suggests that he was running this parallel shadow investigation at the same time beyond just going after the people that, you know, created the smear campaign? pain or not. Kevin, I just don't. I know the law firms. I know the law firms too well who are involved. And I know what I did for 27 years. And if I've got Dwight Schar, whose goal is to force me to sell the team to have to be thrown out so that he can get, remember why Dwight

did it or allegedly did it, is that if you get Dan to have to sell the whole team, Their stake would have been much higher. The value of the minority interest, much higher. Yes. So if I had Dwight Schar trying to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars more by orchestrating my looking bad to where he went to the Jeffrey Epstein route. I mean, we know that whole cost there. I hate to be forced to defend Dan Snyder,

but if you push so far, you've got to go back and defend it. If that's the case, I would have had Bruce Allen, and every cheerleader who was represented by the cat's firm, and everybody else, Jeffrey Freeman, everybody else who had any reason to side with Lightshar trying to get me, I would have had them knowing that I'm watching them. You know, you laugh about, was this the worst private investigator in history that he's sitting there and says, good morning, I'm being asked to watch you? When I was in bathroom, I was.

Right. Well, he wasn't. That's actually attacked. When I was Ambassador and I was in Russia, I was told the Russians would move my toothbrush from one side of the bathroom to the other to let me know they're watching me. And I said to the State Department,

you guys have seen too many James Bond movies. I'm staying at a four seasons going as a tourist. I'm the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. The Russians are not going to care about me. First day I shave, brush my teeth. Second day, I shave and go brush my teeth. teeth and my toothbrush has been taken. The Russians weren't subtle.

They just wanted me to know not to dwell. They were watching. That's a cool story. And that's exactly what I would have done to the Shah Kabbal, potential cabal, that was trying to do me in about my most valuable asset, which is my football team, so much so that they link me with Jeffrey Epstein, so much so. remember when that stuff came out, I called you and said, can you imagine we bought it for about 30 minutes, we bought it. We thought it was over. They finally had the goods on Snyder because he

was linked with Epstein. And it turns out, no, Dwight Schar had a cabal. And if I were the lawyers to fight back on that, I would have done just what was done here. You don't need the interference with the Beth Wilkinson investigation to throw Dan Snyder out for how to having been the boss of what Roger Goodell said was the worst workplace harassment, workplace misconduct he's ever heard of. That's all you need. And the fact that the guy then doesn't say, oh, my God, how embarrassing is this? I'm stepping aside for a year.

I'm bringing in a proxy. I will learn. I will do better. I owe it to all of you to do better. That's all it took. The only thing that I would say to you is that with respect to the, you know, the findings that there was, you know, quote, unquote, hush money offered to silence, you know, several former employees. And specifically the woman that they settled with for $1.6 million.

None of that had to do with the Dwight Schar smear campaign. We don't know exactly what the conversation was. So I'm not going to speculate as to whether there was a disagreement, whether she got proper compensation for our NDA. I just don't know those conversations enough, but I don't believe Reed Smith, the lawyers, would go out there and say, here's what we're going to do. We're going to intimidate the witnesses

of an investigation by the League for Workplace Misconduct. We're going to intimidate them and we're going to buy them as opposed to we're going to do our job as lawyers. If other people can go there, go get a prosecutor, I was a 27-year defense lawyer. I know that when my client, was being attacked, hard enough to get it, client was being attacked wrongly. Your job is to defend them regardless. But when they're being attacked wrongly, when they're being linked to

Jeffrey Epstein, when people come down the closet, we don't know what the story was about her. We know her side. We know his side. I'm not going to speculate on it. But I just don't believe when you start with Dan Snyder ran a campaign to intimidate and to hurt this congressional investigation, or the Beth Wilkinson's investigation, when he says, he answered, read that his answers on that were pretty clear. He was proud that they had this investigation about the Indian defamation. Yes. But again, you know, I want to make sure we're clear on this. This is something we've talked about for over a year now, or more than a year. If somebody had conducted that kind of public smear campaign against any of us, I would have hired you and three others to defend me

in any way, shape, or form that you could. We understand that. He had every right to do that. Well, he had every right to defend himself against any of these allegations. I wanted to ask a couple of other quick things, because I know you have to run here. Do you think ultimately it was just a bad idea, even though it's not uncommon, that it was just a bad idea for the lead to sort of kowtow to this secret, you know, not secret, but to this common. an interest agreement, that ultimately that that just didn't help anybody? Boy, if Jeff Pash could have that day back, he would undo it. Yeah.

It was meant to let the investigation go forward to at best do her work, to not get caught up in the procedural getting tied up. But again, you got to think that when it comes out, how it's going to be characterized. And that was a horrendous idea. But by the way, what more will best. Wilkinson have told us today. I believe she might know about that

one incident to 1.6 million, maybe some additional facts, but it's not like there's a dead body somewhere that Beth knew about that nobody else knew about at this point, so it's much to do about nothing except it hurts

Dan. It's again the wrong judgment each time. I would have insisted Beth Wilkinson released a report, because the devil, you know, the transparency versus what's going to be there. So she's going to characterize it terribly about me? What do you think the Democrats just did on the hill? It's so clear to me in hindsight, Howard, that, you know, the fine,

which got negotiated to something that wasn't really a fine, the suspension that the league probably wanted that got negotiated to something that wasn't really a suspension, the common interest agreement that You know, they ended up agreeing to that he just, for whatever reason, had all of the leverage in the league and the Snyder conversations. He had them by the balls for some reason. Absolutely. Look, they couldn't come away with this and announce nothing to the worst case of workplace misconduct. So they needed a $10 million fine, and if Dan had the common sense of Kevin Sheenney, would have said,

actually hit me with a $20 million real fine. Right. But he said, I can't have a fine. So you call it tomato, I'll call it tomato. You call it a suspension, and I'll call it. I'm going to focus on the stadium and my wife's coming in. As if the Dan detractors, which was anybody who watched what he did to the team, the Dan detractors would be fooled or changed by that.

But ultimately, he just heard himself and he hurt the least. and if he had just given in to Roger Goodell saying, Dan, let's make this real because it is. How about some contrition, contrition, a suspension, a fine, and let's move on? Bob Urfay got suspended, and now he's holier than now. Right. Dan could one day have gotten suspended and men screamed about other owner's misconduct. But again, victim is.

But he just doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. He's been the victim. All right. one last thing because you mentioned and I agree with you that a lot of this was more interesting than important. God, if we've really been suckered into the Ron Rivera of phraseisms. So there's still all of these other investigations, you know, the Mary Joe White investigation,

I would imagine is the next one to drop. At this point, given how long it's been, and I think we talked about this maybe three months ago, It's like if she really had the smoking gun, right? Like we've always said, we doubt that there is one. Hopefully there is one. I think we would have heard about it by now. So what are you expecting from that? Dan's lawyers let him go on the record and saying he didn't even know who Tiffany Johnson was until the allegations.

So the Tiffany Johnson knee, this may go down or five, this may become the most famous guy in history, but we will never know whether he touched it. And whether he put his hand to steer it to his back, I love the answer. Did you steer it to your limousine? I don't have a limousine. Okay, well, was there a town car? I mean, you know, Dan, you didn't drive yourself home that night. I assure you, you didn't drive yourself home.

But they let him answer the questions. There's no more there there. If Dan Snyder has a hidden body somewhere, and Mary Joe White has found it when he's, no one else has, Mary Joe White goes into the legal Hall of Fame forever. She becomes, you know, Henry Aaron and Aaron Judge together. I don't think there's any more there. I would hate to be Mary Joe White because whatever I issue is anticlimactic.

Go let the Attorney General in D.C. held some more press conferences he's leaving. That's going to, that's going to wither away. the good news is Dan would have survived this, but he's likely to have 7 billion reasons why he'd be a fool to care anymore. And so, again, if it's a $5 billion buyout that he can get at any time, hold the club another 10 years, it's not going down in value. But right now with everybody, every league owner calling Jeff Bezos and saying, do what it takes to get him out and we will help you out.

With every league owner doing that, Dan will get a $2 billion windfall above the windfall of being a sports team owner because everybody wants him out and there's a guy with the liquidity to overpay for the club. It really is remarkable when you think about it. I mean, the guy punched himself over and over again, just bloodied himself over and over again. And he's going to benefit to the tune of an incremental $2 billion because of it.

I mean, it's just, it's amazing. I mean, I know that, you know, more likely than not, he would have done something else, but leaking those emails just completely re-energized the whole push. And it's just, it's amazing that ultimately he'll end up with a bigger windfall because of it. With the leaked emails, but the leaked emails is part of the bigger illness, which is he just can't get it. He has less self-awareness than anyone we've ever met except for possibly Donald Trump. It's so true. Great job.

Who do you like in the soccer today? You know, I think France will win, but for a Belgian fan who, think that the French might win, this is worse. This is worse than the Belgians losing. Is the Belgians losing and watch the French win? They're going to, you know, again, Belgium lost in era. This was the end. These guys are the last time together.

They were second ranked in the world and they underperformed. So the kick in the teeth will be the French who always treat the Belgians like their second class. Forget second class systems. The French are the day. Dan Snyders of European football. That's what we have. And the last thing we can do is root for the French to win. I'm hoping the Brits win.

Do the French treat Belgians worse or Americans? They treat them equally badly differently. The Belgians, they treat like the poor often. The Americans, they treat like we deserve their contempt. But we end up with the same thing both, which is you better speak fool in French and not let them know where you're from or you're not going to like how you're treated.

Thank you, and au revoir. All the best. Thanks so much, Kevin. Have a great day. At the Howard Gutman on Twitter, everybody. Howard's radio show, as I see it, you can download via the Odyssey app, which is a way actually you can listen to my radio show as well.

We are done for the day. I'll be back, obviously, on Monday. We'll recap all of the NFL from tomorrow, and then we'll begin the countdown to what will be one of the biggest games, really Washington has had in years a week from tomorrow night against the Giants at FedEx Field. Have a great rest of the weekend.