The same cache of 650,000 emails that led to the resignation of Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden also included communications between NFL general counsel Jeff Pash and then-Washington Football Team general manager Bruce Allen in which the league attorney assured the club executive that a $15,000 fine would be rescinded.
The emails were included as part of the NFL's investigation into hostile workplace and sexual harassment allegations against the Washington Football Team (WFT) — a probe that ended in July, resulting in a $10 million fine for the club and owner Dan Snyder ceding day-to-day control of the franchise to his wife, Tanya.
On Thursday night, both The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported that Allen, who was fired in 2019, casually discussed several controversial topics with Pash over email, including the Patriots Deflategate scandal, league officiating, and the team's former name, the Redskins, which has since been scrapped under pressure from Native American groups and sponsors who found it offensive.
The emails between Pash and Allen were exchanged between 2009 and 2018 and reveal a surprisingly close, convivial relationship between the two.
Gruden resigned as head coach of the Raiders on Monday after emails he sent to Allen between 2011 and 2018 surfaced in the Times and Journal showing him using racist, misogynistic and homophobic language to criticize league figures.
The same cache of 650,000 emails that led to the resignation of Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden also included communications between NFL general counsel Jeff Pash (pictured) and then-Washington Football Team general manager Bruce Allen in which the league attorney assured the club executive that a $15,000 fine would be rescinded
According to the Times, Pash rushed to the defense of the WFT in 2013 after the club was fined $15,000 when then-coach Mike Shanahan allegedly doctored an injury report.
Allen called the claim 'BS' and Pash overruled the league fine, telling Washington's GM that the club wouldn't need to pay the $15,000 'or any other amount with respect to this matter and you should consider the fine to be rescinded in its entirety.'
And when hostile workplace and sexual harassment allegations were made by WFT cheerleader against the team in 2018, Pash offered comforting words to Allen.
'I know that you are on it and would not condone something untoward,' he wrote Allen in an email, according to The Times.
In response to the Journal's story, a league spokesman dismissed the reported emails between Allen and Pash as common interaction between NFL officials and team leaders.
'Communication between league office employees and club executives occurs on a daily basis,' Jeff Miller, the NFL's executive vice president
