-----Original Message-----
From: Paul and Bill from Ringside at the Reckoning <ringsideatthereckoning@substack.com>
To: add1dda@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Nov 14, 2022 9:24 pm
From: Paul and Bill from Ringside at the Reckoning <ringsideatthereckoning@substack.com>
To: add1dda@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Nov 14, 2022 9:24 pm
The left's full-court press against Dan Snyder
The left's full-court press against Dan Snyder 
Dan Snyder owns the football [sic] that was known as the Washington Redskins until he gave in to the woke mob and changed the name. Now, they are the Washington Commanders. Snyder has owned the team since 1999. Under his leadership, it has rarely been good. Frequently, it has been bad. It's not that Snyder hasn't tried. In fact, he's tried almost everything. He hired two Super Bowl winning coaches (Joe Gibbs and Mike Shanahan), a coach who took a team to the Super Bowl (Ron Rivera), and a coach who narrowly missed out on a couple of Super Bowl appearances (Marty Schottenheimer). He hired a great college coach (Steve Spurrier), a respected offensive coordinator (Jay Gruden), and a coach who had never run a team or been a coordinator (Jim Zorn). Only Gibbs succeeded, and he came nowhere close to matching his earlier successes with the Redskins. At times, Snyder has meddled extensively in on-the-field matters. At other times, he has largely stayed out of that side of things. At times, he has spent lavishly in free agency. At other times, he has been very conservative in that market. Nothing worked. Therefore, like nearly every other Commanders fan, I would be happy if he sold the team. At the same time, I don't like to see anyone bullied into selling his company. I like it even less when the bullies are leftists with questionable motives. Unfortunately, this is what's happening to Dan Snyder. He is the victim of a power play by three of the four pillars of modern American leftism — the mainstream media, Democrats, and lawyers, including some in the Biden administration. (The fourth pillar — the education establishment — is not implicated.) Let's start with the media. The washington post has been attacking Snyder non-stop for the past few years. It's normal for the hometown paper of a losing team to criticize the owner from time to time. And the paper has an obligation to report allegations of improper conduct leveled against a club owner. Snyder has been accused of sexual harassment and financial irregularities. He has also committed more than of his share of pr missteps. But these realities can't explain the quantity and virulence of the anti-Snyder articles that appear so regularly in the post. With Donald Trump out of office, the owner of the commanders has become the paper's great white whale. When Snyder recently announced that he was seriously considering selling the team, the post noted that Jeff Bezos is interested in buying. Bezos owns the post. Bezos' interest in purchasing the commanders was well known. Yet, until Snyder expressed interest in selling the team, I never saw the post disclose in any anti-Snyder hit piece that its owner wants to buy the club. Was the post doing Bezos' bidding in its attack pieces on Snyder. I don't know. The post ran a college basketball coach (Mike Lonergan) and a college football coach (D.J. Durkin) out of town for offending its woke sensibilities. This may also be what's behind its assault on Snyder. The assault may have nothing to do with Jeff Bezos' interests, but we shouldn't rule out that possibility. Apparently, Dan Snyder doesn't. Next, let's consider the democrats. They have been holding congressional hearings on the allegations of sexual harassment against Snyder and his organization. This is a travesty. The remedy for sexual harassment by a private employer is in the courts, not in congress. Has congress ever before investigated such employer-specific sexual harassment claims? I don't think so. Did it investigate allegations of sexual harassment in the movie/television industry — a much broader area of inquiry, and therefore one in which the public has a greater interest in examining? Not as far as I can tell. After all, hollywood is on the democrats' side. Is Jeff Bezos? Not to the same extent as hollywood. Indeed, he has been somewhat critical of Joe Biden's administration. However, Bezos' campaign contributions have gone predominantly to democrats over the years. Perhaps more to the point, Snyder was a big contributor to Donald Trump. Thus, the suspicion arises that the dems may be investigating Snyder at least in part for partisan purposes and/or in part for the advancement of Bezos' interests. Reportedly, the Biden administration is also going after Snyder. espn reports that the u.s. attorney for the eastern district of virginia has opened a criminal investigation of the washington commanders owner over alleged financial improprieties. Reportedly, the investigation was triggered by a letter from a house committee (controlled by democrats) to the ftc. Would this normally lead to a criminal investigation by the doj? I don't know. However, it seems to me that the resources of a u.s. attorney's office would be better expended on more serious matters than whether Dan Snyder cheated his business partners and his team's fans. Finally, Karl Racine, the attorney general of the District of Columbia, has filed a civil suit against Snyder. Racine, a local official, is not part of the Biden administration. However, he's a democrat. One of the claims against Snyder is that he defrauded D.C. consumers. How? By publicly stating that sexual harassment at redskins park was limited in scope and that the team was cooperating with an independent investigation. It's routine for those accused of serious misconduct — whether guilty or not — to deny or minimize the allegations and to say that they are cooperating with authorities. Can this really form the basis for an actionable claim of consumer fraud? If Snyder and his organization indulged in widespread sexual harassment, the victims should have sued him for it. They didn't. But now, as part of the full-court press against Snyder, the democrat-controlled D.C. government wants to litigate the women's stale claims through the back door, via an overreaching legal theory. If this move works, the law is an ass. In sum, we see a series of liberal actors engaging in unusual moves (weird investigations, novel legal theories, etc.) to make life miserable for Dan Snyder. We see that Snyder, under intense pressure, is looking to sell his team. We see Bezos, who owns the post and has links with democrats, trying to swoop in and buy it. It's reasonable to suspect a connection between the assault on Snyder and Bezos' quest to buy the commanders. But even if there's no connection, Snyder is being treated unfairly, in my opinion. I still hope Snyder sells the team. A new owner is likely to produce more wins with less drama (fewer own-goals, to borrow an expression from a different "football"). But if Snyder does sell, I very much hope it's to someone other than Jeff Bezos. And there's reason to hope that it will be. Snyder reportedly holds Bezos' ownership of the post against him. If he doesn't, he certainly should.
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