Tanya Snyder, the co-CEO of the Washington Football Team and the wife of club owner Dan Snyder, reportedly told other NFL franchise owners that neither she nor her husband leaked emails from a league investigation, which led to Jon Gruden's resignation as Las Vegas Raiders head coach.
Tanya made her remarks to at the NFL owners meetings on Tuesday in New York, four sources told Washington Post. A spokesman for Dan Snyder did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation, and NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy declined to comment. McCarthy has continued to deny that the leaked emails came from the NFL.
Gruden's racist, homophobic, and misogynistic messages were included among 650,000 emails in the NFL's 10-month probe into hostile workplace and sexual harassment allegations against the Washington Football Team (WFT). As a result of the investigation that ended in July, the club was fined $10 million and Dan agreed to cede day-to-day control of the franchise to Tanya.
The 58-year-old Gruden resigned earlier this month after the emails he sent to then-WFT president Bruce Allen between 2011 and 2018 surfaced in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
In the emails, which Gruden sent when he worked as an on-air analyst for ESPN, the longtime head coach used a racist trope to describe players' union executive director DeMaurice Smith, an African American, and called commissioner Roger Goodell a 'f*****.'
There has been speculation that the emails were leaked by the WFT owners.
Tanya Snyder and Daniel Snyder pictured at a New York museum in 2007
Jon Gruden's racist, homophobic, and misogynistic messages were included among 650,000 emails in the NFL's 10-month probe into hostile workplace and sexual harassment allegations against the Washington Football Team (WFT). As a result of the investigation that ended in July, the club was fined $10 million and Dan agreed to cede day-to-day control of the franchise to Tanya. The 58-year-old Gruden resigned earlier this month after the emails he sent to then-WFT president Bruce Allen between 2011 and 2018 surfaced in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal
NBC's Peter King, a veteran NFL reporter, wrote that 'several smart people in the league think the leaks come from the Snyder camp' and that reporting has since been matched by the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, a former WFT cheerleader and marketing director has accused Dan of leaking Gruden's emails.
Melanie Coburn, who worked with the team's cheerleaders for 14 years, claims he leaked the emails in an effort to push blame for the team's sexual harassment scandal onto Allen.
'I believe Dan Snyder leaked these emails,' Coburn told Fox News on October 19. 'I believe he's trying to put all the blame on Bruce Allen.'
According to Coburn, private investigators working for Dan spoke to former team cheerleaders to question them about Allen, who was fired in Washington after a 3-13 season in 2019.
'He sent over a dozen private investigators to my colleagues' homes across the country … to show up on cheerleaders' doorstops and ask them what their relationship with Bruce Allen was,' Coburn said.
'I feel like he's trying to pin everything on Bruce, right, and place all the blame for all of the bad culture on him, which just isn't true.'
Dan's attorney, Jordan Siev, denied Coburn's accusations in a statement to DailyMail.com.
'Any suggestion by Ms. Coburn that anyone associated with the Washington Football Team was behind any leaks concerning Jon Gruden is categorically false and part of a pattern of misinformation being spread by Ms. Coburn,' Siev said.
Allen did not respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.
If Coburn's claim is correct, this wouldn't be the first time he shared a portion of these emails.
Redacted versions of some of Gruden's emails were also filed in federal court last June as part of Dan's efforts to compel Allen to produce discovery in a separate defamation lawsuit filed in India against a tabloid website. Several of the emails included in that court filing and reviewed by DailyMail.com are among the messages leaked to the Times.
Dan was attempting to prove Allen was involved in a plot to falsely connect him to disgraced investor Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who committed suicide in prison in 2019.
His motion directing discovery from Allen in the case was dropped in April.
The two have also been at odds over over several issues, including Allen's severance, which Dan was forced to pay in full in 2020.
The NFL report in which the emails were contained remains a contentious issue.
Citing confidentiality concerns, Goodell has refused calls to issue a report on the league's 10-month investigation.
'When you make a promise to protect the anonymity, to make sure that we get the right information, you need to stay with it,' Goodell said. 'And so we're very conscious of making sure that we're protecting those who came forward. They were incredibly brave.'
He also said that both Dan and the team 'have been held accountable.'
The investigation was initiated in 2020 following Washington Post reports female WFT employees made sexual harassment and hostile workplace allegations against the club. Attorney Beth Wilkinson was initially hired by the WFT to conduct the investigation until the NFL assumed control of the probe, after which, she reported to the commissioner's office.
When the NFL was alerted about Gruden's emails, league officials reviewed them and submitted conclusions to Goodell. The emails were then sent to Raiders owner Mark Davis as the league waited on him to take action, according to the Post.
Wednesday, Davis joined many others in demanding to see the league's report from the WFT probe, which Goodell has steadfastly rejected.
'Yeah, I think that there should be,' Davis told reporters when asked if there should be a publicized report on the investigation.
The NFL Players Association, the US
