"Serious" issues complicate final legal negotiations between NFL, Daniel Snyder
The NFL is close to approving a sale of the Commanders from Daniel Snyder to Josh Harris. Unless it isn’t.
According to the Washington Post, lingering concerns regarding responsibility for potential future liability “threaten to complicate” the final process of closing the deal between Snyder and Harris.
An unnamed source described the issues to the Post as “significant.”
“Hopefully it gets resolved,” the source told the Post. “But at this point, it’s serious.”
Snyder has long demanded indemnification from his soon-to-be-former partners for legal issues that could arise in the future. The issues reportedly are “related at least in part” to the pending Jon Gruden litigation arising from the leaking of emails he sent to former Commanders executive Bruce Allen.
It’s hard to know how big of a deal it truly is. The Post report acknowledges the possibility that Snyder is simply trying to seize upon the momentum to finally kick him out of Club Oligarch, holding firm for a few concessions (or more) as they’re trying to close the door on him for good.
But the Gruden case looms over the transaction, especially after Wednesday’s lengthy item from ESPN that delves into more detail regarding the situation. If it turns out that Snyder, not the league office, leaked the Gruden emails to the media, the league should want Snyder to be responsible for any eventual settlement or verdict paid to Gruden.
Snyder insists he didn’t leak the emails. While it’s not the kind of thing to which he’d raise a hand and confess, he seems to be more strident than usual in his denial. He has testified under oath before Congress that he didn’t leak the Gruden emails, which raises the possibility of a prosecution for perjury if the objective, digital footprints show otherwise. In sharp contrast, Allen testified to Congress that league executive Lisa Friel said the Commanders leaked the emails to the media.
We don’t know who leaked the emails, but we know that: (1) they were leaked by someone; and (2) Gruden is very motivated to prove who did it. Regardless of how the negotiations between Snyder and the league resolve themselves — if they do — before next Thursday’s vote on the sale of the team to Harris, Gruden’s lawsuit might not “burn the [NFL’s] house down,” but it could in theory put Snyder in prison and/or Commissioner Roger Goodell out of a job.
My own theory/hypothesis continues to be that Snyder delivered the Gruden emails to the league, knowing that the league would weaponize them against Gruden, first by leaking one of them, in an effort to squeeze Raiders owner Mark Davis into firing Gruden over it, and then leaking more when Davis refused to do so.
If Gruden ever manages to prove this precise chain of events with sufficiently clear evidence, there’s a more-than-zero-percent-chance that both Snyder and Goodell (and maybe a few other people) could end up in prison, or at least being prosecuted.
Source: NBC Sports
