Clemens delivers subpoena to House

February 12, 2011|Associated Press

Roger Clemens issued a subpoena to the House committee in Washington that he’s accused of lying to about using performance-enhancing drugs during his pitching career.

Clemens wants all interview summaries, notes, and memoranda related to the hearing on steroid use in Major League Baseball held three years ago by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to a copy of the subpoena dated Thursday and provided to reporters yesterday by the committee.

The subpoena covers communications between the committee and 20 people, including retired baseball players Jose Canseco, Chuck Knoblauch, C.J. Nitkowski, and Andy Pettitte. The list also includes Clemens’s former personal trainer Brian McNamee, who told investigators he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs, and staff from all four teams Clemens played for — the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Astros.

Clemens told the committee that he never used steroids or human growth hormone during his 23-season career that ended with 354 wins, 4,672 strikeouts and seven Cy Young awards. He is facing perjury, false statement, and obstruction of Congress charges in federal court.

US District Judge Reggie Walton authorized Clemens to issue the subpoena at a hearing in December after Clemens attorney Rusty Hardin said the committee was refusing to turn over evidence for the criminal case.

Hardin also got Walton’s approval to subpoena records of baseball’s investigating commission headed by George Mitchell, which in 2007 accused Clemens of using performance-enhancing drugs in a report to the baseball commissioner.

Bonds enters plea again

Barry Bonds’s perjury trial in San Francisco is approaching and the lawyers and judge are still scrambling to set limits and rules for the month-long proceedings scheduled to start March 21. US District Judge Susan Illston ordered Bonds to enter a plea for the third time since he was initially charged in 2007 with lying to a grand jury about his steroids use. The new plea was needed because prosecutors the day before filed a revised indictment, cutting the number of charges Bonds faces from 11 to five.

Bonds is expected to plead not guilty when he is arraigned March 1, the same day the judge ordered the slugger’s former trainer to appear in court. Illston wants Greg Anderson to reiterate in front of her and under oath his refusal to testify against Bonds during the trial. Illston plans to jail Anderson on contempt of court charges for the duration of the trial if he follows through on his pledge. Anderson’s attorney, Mark Geragos, said Anderson won’t testify.