Ex-pitcher Clemens charged with perjury
Last Updated: Thursday, August 19, 2010 | 4:32 PM ET
The Associated Press
A U.S. federal grand jury indicted seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens on Thursday for allegedly lying to Congress about using steroids.
Clemens faces charges of obstruction of Congress, making false statements and perjury.
The six-count grand jury indictment said that Clemens obstructed a congressional inquiry with 15 statements that he made under oath, including denials that he had ever used steroids or human growth hormone. The indictment alleged that he lied and committed perjury regarding the same matters.
Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee, testified under oath at a February 2008 hearing before a House of Representatives committee and contradicted each other about whether Clemens had used the banned substances.
McNamee has told federal agents, baseball investigator George Mitchell, and the committee that he injected Clemens more than a dozen times with steroids and human growth hormone from 1998 to 2001.
Clemens has maintained that McNamee was lying.
"As far as we're concerned, it's vindication," Earl Ward, one of McNamee's lawyers, said of the indictment.
The New York Times first broke the news on its website, basing the report on information from two people briefed on the matter and said an announcement is expected in the near future.
Clemens's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said by telephone from Houston that he had just learned of the indictment and would wait to decide whether to comment.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, the judge who presided over the perjury and obstruction trial of Vice-President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. No date has been set for Clemens's initial court appearance.
In a defiant appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2008, Clemens said, "I've been accused of something I'm not guilty of … I have never taken steroids or HGH."
Longtime Clemens friend and pitching star Andy Pettite told congressional investigators that Clemens confided to him that he had used human growth hormone. Clemens said Pettite's assertion wasn't correct.
"I believe Andy has misheard" the conversation, Clemens responded. He said he had simply mentioned to Pettite a TV show about three older men who used HGH to get back their quality of life.
On Thursday, former Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, who was the top Republican on the House panel at the time of the baseball star's testimony, called the indictment "a self-inflicted wound" by Clemens.
"Clemens was not under subpoena," Davis said. "He came voluntarily. He wanted to come to the committee and clear his name, and I sat there in the office with [committee chairman] Henry Waxman and said, 'Whatever you do, don't lie'."
During a 23-year career as a starting pitcher, Clemens played for the Boston Red Sox, the Toronto Blue Jays, the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros, chalking up 354 wins, 4,672 strikeouts and a lifetime earned run average of 3.12.
Other baseball greats, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds among them, have become enmeshed in the steroid scandal of the 1990s.
McGwire said in January that "it was a wrong thing what I did. I totally regret it."
The Clemens matter was the second referral the congressional committee made to the Justice Department. The other was the case of Miguel Tejada, who pleaded guilty to making misleading statements to committee investigators in 2005 regarding his knowledge of performance-enhancing drugs.
