Bruce Allen exchanged 87 phone calls with firm at center of Dan Snyder defamation suit

Audacy

Source: Audacy

Bruce Allen exchanged 87 phone calls with firm at center of Dan Snyder defamation suit

Bruce Allen, the longtime former president of the Washington Football Team, had extensive conversations with a representative of an investment banking firm that is handling the sale of a minority stake in the franchise.

According to a report by AJ Perez of Front Office Sports, Allen had dozens of conversations over a number of months with John Moag, the founder of Moag & Co., the Baltimore-based firm which has been hired by minority owners Dwight Schar, Frederick W. Smith, and Robert Rothman to facilitate the sale of their 40 percent stake of the Washington Football Team.

Perez reports Allen and Moag exchanged 87 phone calls for a total of more than 22 hours of conversation. Conversations that took place over a 10 month period from January to Nov. 2020.

According to an 18-page filing in a New Delhi court, the two also exchanged text and emails that “prove” the pair were “focused on negative publicity directed at” Washington owner Daniel Snyder.

Allen was fired by Snyder in Dec. 2019 after nearly a decade as one of Snyder’s top lieutenants.

These new court documents were part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Snyder in India, in which his attorneys claim the company, MEA WorldWide, published a series of false stories as a part of a smear campaign.

Allen is not the first confidant of Snyder’s to be named in court documents, Mary Ellen Blair, who served as an executive assistant to the Washington owner until 2017, spoke to Schar 157 times on the phone for over 11 total hours. The New York Times reported Blair, at Schar’s behest, would help pass negative information about Snyder to the media.

The lawsuit in India is just one of many involving Snyder and his co-owners.

In Dec. 2020, Snyder filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Cout alleging he is a victim of extortion and Schar was trying to force him to sell the franchise. The case was filed the day after a Washington Post story detailed a $1.6 million settlement the franchise paid to a former employee over a sexual misconduct allegation against Snyder in 2009.

In that case, Snyder alleges Schar had knowledge there was no evidence of wrongdoing, but still “threatened to reveal [the settlement] to discredit me and embarrass my family, but which the insurance carrier decided to settle.”

In Nov. 2020, the minority owners sued Snyder in federal court over claims he had interfered with them selling their minority stake to a pair of California investors for a discounted price of $900 million.

A court filing from that case obtained by The Post included a screenshot of a text message sent by Moag to Snyder which threatened a leak of damaging information: “If you continue your game, you know what I know and what I have never spoken about. And you know it has nothing to do about the media s— … it’s the more serious s—.

“If you want to get to a clean conclusion, let me know,” Moag wrote. “If you want a s— show, we are on for that too.”

In a win for Snyder, U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte ruled the dispute belonged in NFL arbitration and not federal court.

Bruce Allen exchanged 87 phone calls with firm at center of Dan Snyder defamation suit