Senators ask FBI to investigate Blackmun for lying to panel
Two lawmakers are asking the Justice Department and FBI to look into whether former U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun lied to a Senate panel in testimony about the handling of sex-abuse allegations against Larry Nassar.
At issue is Blackmun’s debunked claim that he discussed the case with USOC staff after receiving word of Nassar’s potential crimes from the USA Gymnastics president at the time, Steve Penny. Blackmun first offered that information in written testimony to a Senate subcommittee in June.
A report from the Ropes and Gray law firm released last week concluded that nobody on the USOC staff could corroborate Blackmun’s account of a meeting.
Blackmun also told the investigators there had been a meeting, but later changed his story upon hearing there was no corroboration.
Ropes and Gray concluded Blackmun didn’t inform anyone at the USOC about Nassar upon hearing from Penny, and that there was a 14-month gap between Blackmun’s initial contact with Penny and the time Nassar’s crimes became public.
Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas and Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who are on the subcommittee holding hearings into the sexabuse scandal, said they were turning over the information regarding Blackmun’s testimony to acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker and FBI director Christopher Wray.
“The Subcommittee takes its oversight role seriously, and it appears that Mr. Blackmun has made false claims and misled our Subcommittee — harming the investigation and ability to develop policy,” the Senators said in a statement. “Just as importantly, survivors of abuse have had to wait longer for the truth and longer for systemic changes to help prevent others from similar injury.”
Blackmun did not immediately return requests for comment from The Associated Press.
The executive stepped down from his post in February while battling an advanced form of prostate cancer.
USOC chairman Larry Probst had vigorously defended Blackmun before he stepped down. In the Ropes and Gray report, Probst and board member Susanne Lyons, who took over as acting CEO after Blackmun’s departure, are portrayed as being unaware of the Nassar allegations until they surfaced in news reports, more than a year after Penny contacted Blackmun.
Nassar is serving decades in prison on charges of child pornography and for molesting young women and girls under the guise of medical treatment; many of his accusers — gymnasts for the U.S. team and at Michigan State — testified in searing detail at his sentencing hearing in January.