WFT's Daniel Snyder Targets Ex-GM Bruce Allen in New Legal Filing

Washington Football Team owner Daniel Snyder is still making an effort to clear his name amid allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct towards women formerly employed by the organization. 

After buying out his three outside limited partners, he is now targeting ex-GM Bruce Allen in a new legal filing where he asks for a federal court to allow his attorneys to search Allen's communications. The filing alleges that Allen played a role in the negative stories that have surfaced against Snyder in the last year. 

This is a motion, not a lawsuit, for the court to compel discovery to assist a foreign case. It is known as a 1782 motion. 

This was first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

Snyder filed a lawsuit against India media outlet MEAWW when they published unsubstantiated allegations against him around the same time the Washington Post released a series of stories revealing allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against multiple Washington Football Team officials.

“Petitioner (Snyder) has a good faith belief that Respondent (Allen) has specific knowledge of the creation and distribution of the MEAWW articles, and thus has information relevant to the Indian Action,” Snyder’s motion said.

It continues: "This glaring omission raises further questions about Respondent’s possible role in and/or knowledge of the creation, solicitation, drafting and publication of the Defamatory Articles."

Within the filing, Snyder's legal team argued that Allen could be the source since he was not mentioned in the reports despite having a "hands-on role in running the Team on a day-to-day basis." Allen was fired in 2019 after a decade of employment. 

Additionally, the filing alleges that Allen spoke at great length with Baltimore investment banker John Moag, who represented the team's three minority owners. The three took legal action against Snyder when he tried to block the sale of their shares. 

When Snyder received approval to buyout his partners, the legal case was dropped, and Snyder, as well as his family, now owns 100% of the franchise.

According to the motion, Allen allegedly had 87 phone calls totaling 1,237 minutes (roughly 21 hours) with Moag from Jan. 9, 2020 to Nov. 18, 2020. 

“Further, in the 6 weeks leading up to the publication of the Defamatory Articles (as defined herein), Respondent and Mr. Moag spoke 21 times for 270 minutes, or 4.5 hours. These calls are notable not only for their frequency and length, but for the fact that Mr. Moag himself had extensive contact with representatives of the media both before and after the publication of the Defamatory Articles, and also has exhibited advance knowledge of forthcoming negative articles about Petitioner.”

The NFL's investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations is still ongoing.