#New claims against Dan Snyder, Washington Football Team include lewd cheerleader video

After the Washington Post’s July report alleging a widespread sexual harassment culture within the Washington Football Team’s front office, a new report from the paper on Wednesday suggests team owner Daniel Snyder helped foster such workplace conditions.

Interviews with members across the organization purport that Larry Michael, the team’s lead broadcaster and senior vice president before he abruptly retired in July, ordered the broadcast team to make a lewd video for Snyder with revealing outtakes from the cheerleader’s bikini calendar shoot in 2008. Additionally, one former cheerleader recalled an uncomfortable conversation with Snyder in which he suggested she meet his close friend in a hotel room.

In response to the Washington Post’s initial report, Snyder publicly stated that such behavior “has no place in our franchise” before he hired a law firm to “set new employee standards for the future.” But more than 100 interviews conducted by the outlet suggest that, in his 21 years of ownership, Snyder’s franchise has “marginalized, discriminated against and exploited” women.

Twenty-five women came forward, in addition to the initial 17, to divulge their personal experiences within the Washington organization because they were angered by Snyder’s comments considering his contribution to the toxic culture.

Former cheerleader Tiffany Scourby said Snyder approached her at a 2004 charity event. She said she remembers Snyder calling her by name and, because she had never spoken to him before, was taken aback by it.

“You know, Tony is here,” Snyder said with a gesture to his longtime friend Anthony Roberts, Scourby recalled. Roberts, the official ophthalmologist of the team who was 40 at the time, had performed LASIK surgery on Scourby the year before.

“We have a hotel room,” Snyder said, per Scourby. “Why don’t you and Tony go upstairs and get to know each other better?”

Scourby confided in Donald Wells, the cheerleader director, about the conversation and also told her boyfriend and a longtime friend, who corroborated the story to the Washington Post. Roberts did not respond to requests for comments from the Washington Post.

“There’s a power dynamic, and Dan Snyder looked down on me,” Scourby said. “Because he‘s powerful and our employer, he thinks he somehow has the right to say these things to us, to make these requests of us, and he doesn’t. It’s disgusting.”

Brad Baker, a former production manager on Michaels’ broadcasting staff, claims the request for an unofficial cheerleader video came after a routine production meeting in 2008. Michael excused two female colleagues and asked Baker to stay, along with two other male colleagues: Vice president of production Tim DeLaney and Marc Dress, a videographer, according to Baker.

Michael proceeded to ask for a video of “the good bits” from the cheerleader swimsuit shoot, Baker said. DeLaney then told Michael, ‘Yeah, I’ll take care of it,” Baker said.

Baker said he walked into the editing room later that day to find DeLaney and Dress assembling footage that included multiple shots of cheerleaders’ exposed nipples. The door to the room, which was typically open, was shut.

DeLaney and Dress dispute Baker’s account, with DeLaney claiming he was “never asked to create an outtakes video, and I have no knowledge of anyone creating one or even being asked to create one.”

A video does exist, however, and the Washington Post’s analysis of the 10-minute file shows it was created on June 9, 2008, with no indication the metadata had been manipulated. That jibes with the account of Megan Imbert, a former producer in the broadcast department, who walked into an editing bay in the summer of 2008 to see a shot of a cheerleader’s bikini bottom with focus on the pubic area. Promotional videos by the team share what appear to be identical frames from a topless photo shoot, with the official version blurred and the outtakes in focus.

Shortly after the 2010 calendar shoot in the Dominican Republic, a video featuring partially nude cheerleaders was created. Both videos have the same songs included — The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and U2’s “Mysterious Ways.”