Attorneys demand GOP take down sexualized images of former Washington Commanders employees

Attorneys for former Washington Commanders employees are demanding that House Oversight Committee Republicans remove “sexualized and salacious” sexual images of their clients from the record of the panel’s investigation into the NFL team’s workplace culture.

In a letter released Tuesday, attorneys Lisa Banks and Debra Katz said the release of the images in a memorandum left their clients “humiliated and incensed,” adding that committee Republicans' decision to do so has caused “additional and unnecessary pain.” They said the images, included in a GOP memorandum on the panel's investigation into the team, depict “women’s breasts, buttocks and genital areas” emailed by former team president Bruce Allen.

“Obviously these photographs could have been referenced in the memorandum but not attached,” wrote the attorneys. Banks and Katz are known for their representation of alleged sexual harassment victims, including Christine Blasey Ford during her 2018 Senate testimony about sexual assault that she alleged by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“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,” the attorneys continued in their letter, “Republican members of the Committee chose to subject them to more of the same.”

The duo represents more than 40 former Commanders employees and demanded in their letter the removal of the images of the women from congressional servers, websites and the Congressional Record.

An aide for Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the panel's current top GOP member who's expected to chair the committee next year in the majority, said: “Prior to circulating the internal memo, Committee staff took steps to ensure all sensitive images involving cheerleaders were redacted and their identities kept confidential. As we have said from the beginning, the Oversight Committee is not the proper venue for this investigation.”

The aide said Democrats “cherry-picked facts to support their fabricated narrative rather than conduct a fulsome investigation,” adding that the GOP issued its memo in order to assert “that there is more evidence to be considered.”

That majority-party oversight panel report concluded that Commanders owner Dan Snyder “permitted and participated” in the team’s toxic workplace culture, which includes allegations of sexual harassment and bullying. It also said the team failed to fully cooperate with the congressional investigation.