His accuser, former trainer Brian McNamee, gave a seven-hour, closed-door deposition, and McNamee’s lawyers presented photographs of evidence they said prove the seven-time Cy Young Award winner was injected with steroids.
McNamee headed straight for an exit, not speaking a word to reporters, when he emerged from his interview with lawyers from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. His attorneys wouldn’t discuss the deposition but did talk at length about two color photographs they showed the committee for the first time.
“Roger Clemens has put himself in a position where his legacy as the greatest pitcher in baseball will depend less on his ERA and more on his DNA,” said McNamee lawyers Earl Ward.
Less than an hour later, and a short walk away, Clemens held his own news conference, during which his lawyers repeatedly attacked McNamee’s character and scoffed at McNamee’s newly presented evidence.
“This man has a total history of lying,” Clemens attorney Rusty Hardin said.
Clemens’ repeated denials of McNamee’s allegations in the Mitchell Report about drug use drew Congress’ attention. Clemens spoke under oath to the committee Tuesday - the first time he addressed the allegations under oath, and therefore the first time he put himself at legal risk if he were to make false statements.
There is a public hearing scheduled Wednesday, when Clemens, McNamee and other witnesses, including New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, are to testify. McNamee, also a former trainer for Pettitte, told Mitchell that he injected Pettitte with human growth hormone. Pettitte confirmed in December that he used HGH for two days.
McNamee’s attorneys said their client turned in physical evidence to a federal prosecutor for the Northern District of California last month, shortly after Clemens held a Jan. 7 news conference at which he played a taped conversation between the two men with conflicting accounts at the center of the issue.
“At that point,” Ward said, “(McNamee) decided there was no holds barred.”
One photo shows a crushed beer can that Richard Emery, another McNamee attorneys, said was taken out of a trash can in Clemens’ New York apartment in 2001. Emery said the can contained needles used to inject Clemens. That picture also shows what Emery said was gauze used to wipe blood off Clemens after a shot.
The other picture shows vials of what Emery said were testosterone, and needles - items the attorney said Clemens gave to McNamee for safekeeping at the end of the 2002 season.
While Clemens’ camp called it “manufactured” evidence, Emery said the items were “just a collection of stuff” thrown in a box and “kept in a basement for seven years.”
Emery said McNamee kept the items because he “had this inkling and gut feeling that he couldn’t trust Roger and better keep something to protect himself in the future.”
“We invite Roger Clemens to provide his DNA to the federal government,” Ward said, “so a determination can be made whether or not the items we say were taken from him are, in fact, his DNA.”
Asked about that, Hardin said Clemens would comply with any request of that type from a federal authority.
“But they’re going to have to come to us,” he added. “It’s not going to be McNamee getting out here with a bunch of pictures of waste.”
McNamee’s attorneys did not know when the items would be tested - or when the results might be known.
In attempting to illustrate a public presumption of guilt surrounding Clemens, Hardin brought up the Duke University lacrosse case, telling reporters: “I warn you all now: Five to six to seven months from now, any of you that have jumped on this bandwagon about Roger taking steroids and assumed that anything Brian McNamee has to say about Roger is true, will be embarrassed. This is a fabricated story.”
A relatively subdued Clemens said little at the news conference, essentially repeating the types of brief comments he made earlier Thursday as he walked through marble hallways.
“I’m just glad they made time in their schedule so I can go by and talk to them today,” Clemens said before stepping through the wood double doors to the office of Rep. Tom Davis, the committee’s ranking Republican.
Clemens met with Davis and committee chairman Henry Waxman for about 20 minutes.
“I’m ready for Wednesday to get here,” he said at one point, referring to the upcoming hearing.
That public session will be held in the same wood-paneled hearing room that housed the committee’s 2005 hearing with Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro.
That hearing was part of Congress’ push to get baseball to toughen its drug program, increasing tests and penalties. It also led to former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s report on doping in baseball, which was released in December and contained McNamee’s allegations that he injected Clemens 16 times with steroids and HGH in 1998, 2000 and 2001. Clemens has repeatedly denied those accusations, including, he said, under oath during his deposition.
