Senators Will Push for Increased Oversight of Olympic Sports

To ensure the independence of SafeSport, the Senate bill would prohibit officials employed by the Olympic committee or a national governing body from serving in the organization. SafeSport would also be required to report within 72 hours any attempt by the Olympic committee or a sports federation to interfere with the center’s work. SafeSport would also be required to publish a comprehensive, publicly-available list of people barred from Olympic sports for abusing athletes.

The Senate bill is also designed to give athletes a greater say by increasing their representation on the Olympic committee’s board of directors to one-third from one-fifth. The bill also requires that athletes comprise one-third of the governing structures of Olympic-related sports federations.

The Senate investigation follows a blistering report, commissioned by the Olympic committee and issued last December, that accused two of the highest-ranking United States Olympic officials of doing nothing to investigate, report or stop Dr. Nassar despite learning in 2015 that he had been accused of sexual abuse. That was a year before the accusations became public in a newspaper investigation by The Indianapolis Star.

One of those officials, Scott Blackmun, the Olympic committee’s chief executive, resigned under pressure in February 2018. Another official, Alan Ashley, the Olympic committee’s chief of sports performance, was fired in December 2018. That month, a searing report by the law firm Ropes and Gray found that failures by the Olympic committee to intervene in Dr. Nassar’s abuse helped create “an ecosystem that facilitated his criminal acts.”

Steve Penny, a former chief executive of U.S.A. Gymnastics, resigned in 2017 amid the sexual abuse scandal. He was arrested last October after being indicted on charges of tampering with evidence in the case. He has pleaded not guilty.

This month, the Olympic committee received harsh rebukes from critics for paying Mr. Blackmun $2.4 million in severance. On Monday, Mr. Blumenthal noted that he and Mr. Moran had referred Mr. Blackmun for criminal investigation last December, accusing him of making false statements to Congress in the sexual abuse investigation. Mr. Blumenthal urged the Olympic committee to avoid paying or to attempt to recover the $2.4 million, calling the severance payment to Mr. Blackmun “inexplicable and inexcusable.”

“Blackmun, in effect, was one of the poster boys for what went wrong here,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “The fault was to put medals and money above morals.”

Mr. Blackmun did not respond to messages seeking comment.