The Washington Nationals fired Director of Community Relations Sean Hudson, multiple reports revealed Friday, after he was caught admitting the team discriminated against pitcher Trevor Williams for expressing his Catholic beliefs.
A secretly recorded video posted last week by James O’Keefe of O’Keefe Media Group appears to show Hudson calling out Williams’ “super Christian-Catholic” faith and a 2023 complaint against the Dodgers “Pride Night” as the reason the Nationals exclude Williams from their official social media content.
“One of our pitchers, Trevor Williams, he is very Catholic,” Hudson said, according to the video. “The Dodgers had a group out to the stadium who were drag queens who sometimes dressed up as nuns. He went on social media like, ‘This is wrong, this is my religion, and you all are mocking it.’ Because of that, we don’t use him on social.”
In the aftermath of the undercover report, Nationals President of Baseball Operations Jason Sinnarajah indicated that the organization fired Hudson because they were “horrified by the comments that were made on the video,” and apologized to Trevor Williams for being “dragged into the situation.”
“I want to say unequivocally, we are not anti-Catholic … [and] we do not hide players from social media,” he said.
In a statement sent to The Athletic on Tuesday, the Nationals said they “are aware of comments made by an employee which were recorded without the employee’s knowledge and disseminated without his permission.”
“The statements are not only factually incorrect, but do not reflect the views, opinions or actions of the Washington Nationals.”
As The Federalist reported in 2023, the Los Angeles Dodgers honored an anti-Christian drag group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at one of their Pride Month events. The group routinely uses Christian images to mock Christian views on sex and gender. Williams called out the Dodgers organization on social media for violating their own discrimination policy and celebrating a group which “grossly disrespects and openly mocks many of the traditions and beliefs that Catholics hold most dear.”
On May 27, CatholicVote filed a formal civil rights complaint to the Department of Justice, requesting that the Civil Rights Division “investigate possible unlawful discrimination by the Washington Nationals.”
“If accurate, this is not a misunderstanding or an ordinary communications decision,” said Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote. “It is a direct admission that a Catholic player may have been excluded from official team promotion because he publicly defended his faith. Catholics are not asking for special treatment. We are demanding equal treatment under the law.”
Reinhardt also sent a formal letter to Washington Nationals Managing Principal Owner Mark D. Lerner asking if it is the policy of the organization to punish or exclude Catholic players for free religious expression. If not, she asked what action the organization planned to take against Hudson’s discrimination.
Despite Hudson’s statement that baseball “more than any other sport has the most, like, Republican players,” MLB organizations have been using their players to promote anti-conservative and anti-Christian views for years. Whether it is their pride month logo, pride nights, pride performances, or pride jerseys, major league organizations have pushed an LGBT agenda, and the media that covers baseball has stigmatized objectors. While the league effectively ordered most teams to stop wearing pride uniforms in 2023, Hudson’s confessions about the Nationals’ exclusion of Trevor Williams shows that the agenda is not gone yet.
Beyond the anti-Christian discrimination, Hudson endorsed segregation of on the basis of sexual attraction, suggesting that “if you don’t identify as a member of the LGBTQIA+ population, you shouldn’t be at this specific meeting,” according to the video posted by O’Keefe.
Hudson, who bragged about having a “join the Communist Party” poster in his kitchen, also said he would love to do a promotion where “every homerun is a one-hundred-dollar donation,” because it would be a form of communist wealth redistribution, the video shows.
He also suggested the Nationals have staff assigned to going through the Google search history and purchase history of fans who accept cookies and pay online. Sinnarajah denied this on Friday, saying that the Nationals “do not track people’s Google search history.”
“This seems like a highly intrusive measure to impose on fans simply because they wanted to attend a Nationals baseball game,” said O’Keefe Media Group. “Instead of enjoying a beer or a hot dog, you walk right into a communist surveillance stadium.”
For now, the legal problems the Nationals face are in the religious discrimination complaint filed by CatholicVote on behalf of Trevor Williams. According to a Fox News report, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has stepped in to ask Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate the case, and the Justice Department confirmed they are considering any appropriate action.
No contact info besides Hudson’s Nationals email was readily available.
