D.C. AG files suit vs. Snyder, team, Goodell, NFL

WASHINGTON -- The lawyer wide for the District of Columbia says his bureau is filing a civilian user extortion suit against the Washington Commanders, proprietor Dan Snyder, the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell.

Attorney General Karl Racine announced the civilian ailment for colluding to deceive territory residents astatine a quality league Thursday.

Racine said the squad and league violated D.C. consumers' rights based connected what they knew astir the organization's workplace misconduct, alleging Snyder lied astir his cognition of the situation.

Four posters flanked Racine during his announcement, outlining immoderate of the past of the team's rebranding efforts that included references to D.C. and its emblem and the past of the NFL's probe into the organization's workplace culture.

"Dan Snyder assured fans that helium would afloat cooperate with the probe and the results could beryllium trusted," 1 of the posters read. "That was a lie: He repeatedly attempted to interfere, and the fans could not spot results that were ne'er made public. Because Snyder had a veto."

The findings of Beth Wilkinson's probe were not released successful July 2021, erstwhile the league fined the squad $10 million for having a toxic workplace culture. The last poster read: "Fans' outrage intensified erstwhile it became wide that Snyder lied to them: There would beryllium nary transparency and nary reckoning. That impacted user spending decisions."

Lawyers Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, who correspond much than 40 erstwhile squad employees, said the civilian ailment "is further grounds of what we've agelong known: that some the Commanders and the NFL person engaged successful deception and lies designed to conceal the team's decades of intersexual harassment and abuse, which has impacted not lone the victims of that abuse, but besides consumers successful the District of Columbia."

They added, "The filing of this ailment besides marks an important measurement successful validating the experiences of the brave women and men who came guardant and successful achieving, for the archetypal time, a level of transparency into the scope of the misconduct."

The lawyer wide calling a quality league caught the Commanders by surprise, according to a connection from a spokesperson Wednesday that said they learned astir it connected societal media.

"The Commanders person afloat cooperated with the AG's probe for astir a year," the spokesperson said. "As precocious arsenic Monday, a lawyer for the squad met with the AG who did not suggest astatine that clip that helium intended to instrumentality immoderate enactment and, successful fact, revealed cardinal misunderstandings of the underlying facts."

The squad is being investigated connected respective fronts, including by the attorneys wide of D.C. and Virginia, Congress and the league. NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy past week said erstwhile U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White's reappraisal connected behalf of the league is ongoing and determination is nary timetable for erstwhile it volition beryllium completed.

The Snyders announced past week they hired Bank of America Securities to look into selling portion oregon each of the team. A squad spokesperson said they were "exploring each options" successful regards to the enactment that Forbes values astatine $5.6 billion.