Roger "I never did it" Of course not Roger, Mac injected it. Roger "I just need someone to tell the truth Mac" Not... " I need YOU to tell the truth Mac" What a joke....entire press conference. <object width="440" height="361"><param name="movie" value="http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/player.swf?mediaId=3185758"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/player.swf?mediaId=3185758" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="440" height="361" allowScriptAccess="always"></embed></object> DD
Are you being sarcastic?? Because prosecutors put people in that position all the time. I mentioned this earlier in this thread or another..but we represented a business where the principals were investigated for white collar crime. The prosecutors lied at every turn. They went into a room with one of the guys and told him he would go to jail if he didn't say exactly what they wanted him to. This crap happens all the time. Talk to our mutual friends who are doing criminal work. It's sick. If you've read the excerpts from McNamee's interrogation quoted in Clemens' petition, that's exactly how it reads. McNamee at first says he doesn't know of Clemens being involved with steroids...then the prosecutors threaten him and throws Clemens name out there. Start reading at page 10 of the petition. I'm no Roger Clemens fan...in fact, I can't believe I'm defending him. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0107081clemens10.html Not to mention that the feds already had the trafficing stuff on McNamee outside of anything to do with Roger Clemens. Clemens is a throw-in...he's the sort of big fish that prosecutors have wet dreams about.
I saw that after... I just figured there is no way to prove anything when it is a he said/ he said type of argument. Unless one party recants. And if Macnamee recants, he could go to jail, so I don't see the point other than Roger trying to repair his image with a frivolous lawsuit. What do you think Max, did he or didn't he? DD
Everything you just said assumes McNamee is telling the truth and Roger is lying. I don't know how we can assume that. I'm not assuming either way. I think it's unfortunate that McNamee COULD be lying and at the same time tearing down a man for the world to see. That bothers me. Maybe that's the "innocent until proven guilty" lawyer in me...and I realize that isn't an issue in the court of public opinion....but it FEELS like this is extending far beyond the court of public opinion. That there are ramifications about this stuff that far exceed what happens with rumors regarding actors or actresses in tabloids. Freaking Congress wants to hear about htis...seriously??? Nothing better to do??
There is no doubt MacNamee could be lying, but why? What motivation did he have to lie? And, with Pettite coming out and basically cooberating what MacNamee said...it sure means he was telling the truth at least some of the time. What will be interesting is how Roger handles testifying before Congress.....if he uses his lawsuit as a crutch to avoid the hard questions, if he flat out comes out and says that he has never had steroids or HGH injected into him, that will tell a lot. But if he comes out and says he never knowingly took, or he says "I never injected" that gives him some plausible denial. Congress is going to have to nail him down, and that is where I will gather my final thoughts. Do I think he did it, Yes, I do....based upon MacNamee's testimony and the truth about Andy.... Could MacNamee be lying....heck yes, but I still can't get my head around...why. Oh, one more thing. If Roger recorded that call without MacNamee knowing it, and that is what I suspect happened, I expect the gloves to come off from the MacNamee camp. MacNamee was reaching out, and probably feels bad about outing someone that helped him move up in the world of trainers etc, but now he has to feel somewhat betrayed by Roger.... And if MacNamee did inject HGH or Steroids into Roger, I expect he will soon be coming back swinging and at the very least it will get interesting. On the flip side, it could all be staged by Roger and MacNamee.......but I don't think that is the case. Gonna be fun to watch DD
Read my post to Refman as to why....or better yet, read Roger's petition which includes excerpts from the interrogation of McNamee. I don't know how this turns out...but fun?? Man, I'm so sick of this stuff already. Sports radio is now a bunch of yoohoos pretending to be lawyers. Then they bring on the occasional guest-host lawyer to talk more about it. It will go like that for months. No, thanks. Thank God for satellite radio and uniterrupted music.
wait...he did lie about andy, right??? didn't he say andy did steroids??? and andy said he only did HGH to recover from an injury...right??
I do concede that is a major possibility and Roger or someone should go after them if that is the case. LOL - fair enough. I enjoy the drama, especially when someone gets caught and denies, denies, denies, and then gets busted. "Ok, ok, I did get a hummer in the oval office, but that is NOT my definition of sex" ROFLMAO ! That would be interesting to know. If I was Brian MacNamee, I would be taking those 7 figure deals to speak.....he is going to get SMASHED by big money people he needs some ammo for his own gun. DD
To me, the strangest part of the phone call is when McNamee OFFERS to show up to Roger's press conference and, I would assume, answer questions. Roger ignores that. If he really was innocent, and wanted McNamee to clear his name, damn straight he would want him there at the conference where Roger could grill him with questions himself. Roger sort of addressed that at the press conference by saying something along the lines of he is trying to control himself and didn't want to tear McNamee apart. Not very plausible reason. This is turning into the most elaborate name-clearing fiasco that I have ever seen.
McNamee isn't going to show up at the press conference and say, "i was lying to the prosecutors." not gonna happen and roger knows that. When you hold a press conference you want control. You don't invite wild cards in.
That is the point, if MacNamee was coerced into lying and said so, Roger should go after them and let MacNamee testify on his behalf. If that happens, the public would be on Roger's side. But Max come on, that phone call was hogwash.....Roger NEVER directly told him to tell the truth....I mean...come on...that is all he had to say. This is all Hardin spin....it is so obvious. DD
Richard Justice is the ultimate flip-flopper. Give me a break. You assail Clemens' character for a couple of weeks...and then back off after one day. Either apologize to Roger for jumping the gun on your editorials or keep on keeping on. It's one thing to flip-flop continually about stuff that goes on during the game on the field....but to take such a strong position and then try to back down from it gradually like this is nothing short of irresponsible in every sense of the word. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5435705.html McNamee now is the one who sounds desperate By RICHARD JUSTICE Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Was Brian McNamee asking Roger Clemens for money? That's certainly how it sounded. How do you like your star witness now, George Mitchell? If Clemens had made an offer, would McNamee have changed his story? He sounded desperate enough to do or say just about anything, telling Clemens he has no money, no job and a very sick son. "All I did was what I thought was right," he says. "I never thought it was right, but I thought that I had no other choice, put it that way." He doesn't sound like a man caught telling a lie. If he changes his story now, he's going directly to jail. But in the same conversation, he tells Clemens he's willing to do just that. Without McNamee, there's no case against Clemens. On the best day Clemens has had since Mitchell's report on baseball and steroids was released almost four weeks ago, McNamee suddenly looked like a shaky witness. "Whatever you can do to help," he tells Clemens at one point in that 17-minute telephone conversation attorney Rusty Hardin released Monday afternoon. If that's not a request for money, it's pretty close. It's important to note McNamee hasn't changed his story about injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. But he appears to have neither the stomach nor the money for a long fight with Clemens. He seems willing to negotiate. "I need somebody to tell the truth, Mac," Clemens tells him. "I just don't know why you did it." There's something akin to panic in McNamee's voice. "What do you want me to do?" he asks Clemens. "I'll go to jail, I'll do whatever you want." They sounded like two old friends at times, each telling the other he's sorry for what's happening. At other times, they sounded like two men on the edge. "I want it to go away," McNamee says. "I'm in your corner. I don't want this to happen. But I'd also like not to go to jail, too. But it has nothing to do with you." They're so civil that it's easy to forget each is responsible for the other's troubles. McNamee tells Clemens he ratted him out only when threatened with jail time. Then he offers to go to jail if it will make things right. "You treated me like family," McNamee says. Clemens tells McNamee he wants the truth to come out, but never really presses him to admit that he made up the stories about steroids. Hardin released the tape hoping reporters would notice how McNamee declines to say anything about Clemens using steroids and human growth hormone. "You hear (Clemens) throughout saying, 'Tell the truth,' " Hardin said. Hardin said it was telling that when Clemens urged McNamee to tell the truth, McNamee didn't respond: "I am telling the truth." Clemens once more angrily denied using steroids or human growth hormone. And he said he'd repeat those denials under oath next week to a congressional committee. "I'm going to Congress, and I'm going to tell the truth," Clemens said. No athlete has gone to such lengths to clear his name. Of course, no athlete has had so much to lose in terms of reputation or earning potential. When it was over, nothing of substance had changed except maybe the tone of the debate. McNamee stuck to his previous statements that he injected Clemens between 16 and 21 times in the 1998, 2000 and 2001 seasons. Speaking of those injections, if that's all Clemens is accused of doing, it's not much. I'm no expert on performance-enhancing drugs, but 21 injections over a four-year period don't exactly make Roger Clemens a steroid abuser. "He took them in late July, August, and never for more than four to six weeks max," McNamee told Sports Illustrated. "Within the culture of what was going on, he was just a small part of it. A lot of guys did it. You can't take away the work Roger did. You can't take away the fact that he worked out as hard as anybody." Clemens stormed out of the news conference in which his rage bubbled near the surface. At one point, Hardin passed him a note that said: "Lighten up." But he was in no mood to lighten up. This is the fight of his life. "How I can I prove a negative?" he said. He admitted some people will always believe he did what he's accused of doing. For the first time, though, he seemed to turn things in his direction. He told his story with emotion to reporters and said he'll do it again under oath. Unless there's a paper trail, it's going to come down to one man's word against another man's word. Clemens doesn't seem worried about more evidence surfacing. For the first time, he looks like a man who believes in his fight.
He said, "i need someone to tell the truth." McNamee never once said, "well the truth, Roger, is that you did steroids."
Well there was clearly editing going on since they blocked names, locations, and swear words from the tape, so how do we know other information wasn't edited out?
Of course he isn't going to openly say that, but it would be an opportunity, in the court of public opinion that Roger seems to care about the most here, to put some pressure on McNamee to "tell the truth." As others have said, that whole phone conversation seemed oddly staged, or at least it did from Roger's side. I'm not convinced Roger is guilty, but I don't think that recorded conversation helps Roger's camp as much as some seem to think it does. Edit: I wish Pettite would cooberate me.
