Lie down with dogs . . .

The prosecutors in the Roger Clemens perjury case have already called Kirk Radomski before the grand jury, so one presumes that they intend to use him as a witness at any criminal trial against Clemens. They need to rethink that now:

One week before Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens testified before a House committee at a contentious public hearing last February, McNamee sat down for a deposition with committee investigators.

During questioning behind closed doors in a Capitol building office, McNamee said that as part of his job as Clemens’s trainer, he had injected him with steroids and human growth hormone. McNamee gave the deposition under oath. He was asked several times if he had ever informed Kirk Radomski, a steroids dealer, that he was injecting Clemens with drugs. In each instance, McNamee answered no, he had not.

That assertion has been contradicted by a passage in “Bases Loaded,” a new book by Radomski, in which Radomski says that McNamee indeed told him that he was injecting Clemens. That contradiction and others have raised concerns that Radomski has hurt his credibility as a government witness in the perjury investigation against Clemens, and that he might have damaged McNamee’s credibility as well.

Interesting, but this presumes that Brian McNamee had any credibility to begin with. Oh sure, he may be telling the truth about some specific things related to Clemens and Clemens may very well have lied himself, but as the experts quoted in this story and any practicing attorney knows, credibility is a much larger and much more amorphous concept than the simple matter of whether a given statement is perceived to be true or false.

As I noted back when this story didn’t make me physically ill, Brian McNamee has always had a problem with the truth. He lied to Clemens’ people before the Mitchell Report was out. At least twice. He lied to the media about whether he was involved in steroids. He used to lie and tell people he had a PhD when he didn’t. St. Petersburg, Florida police claimed that he lied to them several times in connection with the investigation with an alleged incident of GHB-fueled date rape. Oh, and then he stiffed the law firm that represented him in that investigation, using the old “my dog ate those legal bills you sent me” defense. According to that same ESPN article, he lied about why he was let go from a teaching position at St. Johns, telling people that he was a victim of the steroid investigation when, in reality, he had a one-year contract that was up and not renewed long before the steroid news hit the papers.

The Kirk Radomski contradiction noted by Schmidt in yesterday’s story is certainly a problem, but it’s nothing new. McNamee is an admitted drug dealer and a serial liar, dating back years. Does any of this make Roger Clemens any more credible? Of course not. But when your star witness in a perjury case is himself a demonstrated liar and arguable scumbag, you have a serious problem with your case.

(thanks to Jason at IIATMS for the link)


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MooseinOhio
15 years ago

Can I use the dog ate my mortgage payment defense to avoid potential future foreclosure?  Just want to know before I divert the funds to fund my PSL and season tickets at the ballpark.