The Washington Commanders sent an 18-page letter to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission on Monday that described the allegations of financial improprieties made by a former team employee and detailed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform as “baseless” and asserted that “no investigation is warranted.”
The rebuttal claims the committee’s letter, which was sent to the FTC on Tuesday, “relies solely on the uncorroborated, false testimony of a single disgruntled former employee,” said former vice president of sales and customer service Jason Friedman, who worked for the team for 24 years.
In an interview with the committee and through shared emails and documents, Friedman alleged that Washington engaged in a long-running practice of withholding refundable deposits from season ticket holders and hiding money that was supposed to be shared among NFL owners.
The team described the committee’s letter as “one-sided” and “uncorroborated” and included declarations from four former executives — team counsel David Donovan, chief operating officer Mitch Gershman, director of finance Paul Szczenski and senior vice president Michael Dillow — as well as documents and text exchanges to dispute Friedman’s claims.
“We are confident that, had this referral not come from a Congressional Committee, the FTC would exercise its discretion to decline to open an investigation based on the uncorroborated and implausible allegations of a single disgruntled former employee, especially one...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...