Washington Football Team co-owner Tanya Snyder on Friday claimed she was “selectively quoted” after her comments about backlash her family received over the team’s scandals drew outrage.
“It is disappointing that comments of mine [on] the Adam Schefter podcast have been selectively quoted and taken out of context,” Snyder said in the statement to The Washington Post.
In an interview with ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Wednesday, Snyder whined that her children, who are in their teens and 20s, caught flack for the teams’ recent scandals and their less-than-stellar on-field record.
“It’s been one of the most difficult years for me, Dan and our family’s lives,” she said, referencing her billionaire husband and team co-owner, Daniel Snyder.
Snyder, 54, said her kids were teased over an NFL investigation that found sexual harassment and bullying ran rampant in the team’s work environment.
The NFL fined the team $10 million in July as a result of the league’s investigation into workplace culture during which over 40 employees came forward — just days after Tanya Snyder joined her husband, Dan Snyder, as co-CEO of the team.
“It’s hard. I get a lump in my throat. It’s a cross between a crime show and a nightmare movie,” she whined about the public relations disaster.
In her statement Friday, Snyder sought to clarify that she and her hubby have apologized to employees who endured “traumatic experiences.”
“To be clear, we have apologized numerous times for the difficult and traumatic experiences that certain people who worked for the Washington Football Team endured, and we have promised that nobody who works for the Team will ever experience such treatment again while Dan and I own the Team.
“I again today reiterate that apology. In addition to our words of apology, our actions — including the many changes made to employee support and training, the leadership team and my taking over the role of co-CEO — demonstrate on a daily basis our commitment to having the Washington Football Team be a professional and respectful workplace, and a source of pride to our employees and the entire community.”
In December 2020, Dan Snyder reached a private $1.6 sexual misconduct settlement with a former staffer who reported an incident on a 2009 private airplane.
Then in February, a group of former cheerleaders settled with the team over claims that a lewd video was made of them using photos from swimsuit calendar shoots.
The women claimed that in 2008, the team’s in-house broadcasting unit was ordered by two high-ranking team officials to make the video of revealing outtakes for Dan Snyder.
Former employee Megan Imbert, who left the team in 2011 after years as a producer in the team’s broadcast, told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday that she found Tanya Snyder’s interview “insulting.”
“The lack of acknowledgement [from Snyder], this self-centered arrogance, that aura of ego we’ve seen and we know. She showed her colors of what that duo [Dan and Tanya] really is,” Imbert told the outlet.
“[Snyder said] she had to stop reading [the investigator’s findings] and said it was ‘too ridiculous’ — is that because you were completely stunned, or are you implying it wasn’t real. It left us feeling completely discredited … We’ve shed a light on the truth but somehow you’re the victim of the past year?”