JTA — The proprietor of the Washington Commanders soccer group, Dan Snyder, was unable to look for a deposition on the sexual harassment scandal surrounding his group on July 6 or 8 due to a visit to Israel to look at his mom’s yahrzeit, the ceremony marking the anniversary of her loss of life, his rabbi claimed.
The Home Committee on Oversight and Reform had summoned Snyder and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to look as a part of an investigation into the Commanders’ work tradition and Snyder’s response to a number of complaints.
In a letter obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Company, Snyder’s lawyer Karen Patton Seymour mentioned that the proprietor was touring to Israel, however could be obtainable for video testimony on July 28 or 29. After Snyder missed the primary listening to on June 22, claiming that he had requested for a delay, the committee had provided the dates of July 6 and eight.
“On condition that these plans are a part of spiritual observances honoring his mom’s reminiscence on the one-year anniversary of her passing, Mr. Snyder’s journey to Israel can’t be rescheduled,” Seymour mentioned within the letter.
A number of ladies staff in government positions with the group have accused their coworkers of sexual harassment. In line with a doc launched in June by New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney, the Home committee’s chair, Snyder carried out a “shadow investigation” to discredit their allegations, which concerned hiring non-public investigators to intimidate witnesses.
The NFL fined the group $10 million and Snyder stepped down from day-to-day operations after the investigation was introduced final July.
In a letter to Maloney, Snyder’s rabbi, Sholom Raichik, wrote that the Snyder household had been planning a visit to Israel over the course of the previous 12 months. A yahrzeit is normally marked with a ceremony at house and sometimes the synagogue, however Raichik mentioned this 12 months’s anniversary coincides with the completion of a commissioned Torah scroll by a scribe in Israel to honor Snyder’s late mom, Arlene Snyder.
Republican Consultant James Comer of Kentucky, who’s a rating member on the Oversight Committee, was additionally despatched the letter from the rabbi.
Raichik wrote that the providers he and Dan Snyder deliberate for the Israel journey will “embody most of July and into August.”
Raichik additionally mentioned that representatives from the Snyder household knowledgeable Maloney on a number of events concerning the yahrzeit observance and provided a number of various testimony dates, “together with showing remotely from Israel.”
“I perceive that many of those Jewish traditions could also be unfamiliar to you and your workers,” Raichik wrote to Maloney. “The workers’s insistence that Mr. Snyder disrupt his observances to take part in proceedings earlier than your committee displays an insensitivity to sacred Jewish traditions.”
A committee spokesperson informed JTA that Snyder failed to look voluntarily on the Committee’s listening to in June and refused to permit his lawyer to just accept service of a subpoena.
