The lawyers for more than 40 former Washington Commanders cheerleaders who accused the organization of fostering a toxic workplace environment demanded Tuesday that Republican lawmakers remove the scantily clad images released in their report last week on the probe into the team from everywhere within Congress.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee released two reports on the investigation into the Commanders’ organization. Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, released their report on their investigation and Republican members on the committee released their own report.
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The lawyers, Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, sent a letter to ranking member Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., demanding Republicans remove the salacious photos of the cheerleaders that were attached as exhibits in the memo. The photos showed several topless women with black bars over private areas.
The photos in the exhibits were sent by former Washington team president Bruce Allen to former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden and several other people. There were nearly 60 emails attached to the Republican memo.
"Our clients are both humiliated and incensed by the GOP’s reckless dissemination of these photographs in an official Congressional document," the letter read in part. "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. Our clients believe that releasing these photos was a desperate effort to protect Mr. Snyder from the scathing findings contained in the Committee’s final report, at their expense.
"We must also note that if Republican Committee members truly believed that Mr. Allen’s distribution of these emails and images – which your memorandum describes as "incredibly offensive" – proves that it was he who created the sexually hostile work environment at the team, why would they think it appropriate to disseminate these sexualized images even more broadly in an official Congressional document? Obviously these photographs could have been referenced in the memorandum but not attached. Rather than show consideration to the many women who came forward to the Committee to share their experiences of objectification and sexual exploitation while employed by the team, Republican members of the Committee chose to subject them to more of the same."
A committee Republican aide told ESPN the pictures are not and will not be a part of the congressional record as the memo was distributed to Republican members of the committee and several media outlets. The aide told the site the memo was meant to illustrate that more evidence should be considered in this case.
Melanie Coburn, a former Washington cheerleader and marketing director who has been a leading voice in the allegations against the organization, told ESPN some of the photos were a part of the calendar and others were pre-edits that hadn’t been released at the time.
"It's more about when [Allen] got access to these and what state these photos were in," Coburn said. "In some body paint, if it's not touched up, it's very revealing.
"These women are devastated again. They feel powerless, they feel silenced and they're retraumatized."
