Lawyers representing former Washington Commanders cheerleaders condemned likely incoming House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) for including “sexualized and salacious photographs” of the cheerleaders in a memo.
The memo in question was responding to a committee report that former team owner Dan Snyder had allowed a toxic culture of harassment, ESPN reported. Attorneys Lisa Banks and Debra Katz said their clients were “humiliated and incensed” and demanded the images be expunged from congressional records.
COMMANDERS’ DAN SNYDER GAVE ‘EVASIVE’ AND ‘MISLEADING’ TESTIMONY TO CONGRESS
“Our clients are both humiliated and incensed by the GOP’s reckless dissemination of these photographs in an official Congressional document,” the lawyers wrote in the letter to Comer. “They also feel retaliated against by Republican Committee members who have apparently chosen to embarrass them publicly for coming forward. There was simply no legitimate reason for GOP members to have done this, and it has caused our clients additional and unnecessary pain.”
“These photographs, which show women’s breasts, buttocks and genital areas, were apparently disseminated to advance team owner Daniel Snyder’s persistent but discredited narrative that Bruce Allen, and not Mr. Snyder, was responsible for the sexually hostile and misogynistic team culture,” they added, speculating as to the reason for the photos’ release.
In the photographs in question, the women’s faces and private parts were blacked out.
The letter was quickly picked up by the committee’s Democrats, who used it to condemn their Republican colleagues.
“Our report exposed what is possible when those in power work to maintain a culture that glorifies sexual harassment. No organization should ever disseminate sexualized images of an individual without their permission, least of all a body charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and retaliation in the workplace,” a spokesman for the House Democrats told ESPN. “We hope Committee Republicans will hear the concerns of the women pictured in their report and take overdue steps to protect their privacy.”
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The images were included in the report as an attempt to discredit the Democrats’ findings in their report on harassment within the Commanders.
“These emails show that under Allen’s leadership there was a toxic workplace — one that has since been reformed based on independent third-party reviews of the team’s culture,” Comer’s memo wrote. “Committee Democrats have not identified or presented any similar emails or documents identifying any racist, misogynistic, or homophobic behavior from Dan Snyder.”
