* Defense questions whether witness profited from case
* Ex-trainer key to government’s perjury case
(Updates with defense cross-examination)
By Ian Simpson
WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) – The top defense lawyer in
ex-baseball star Roger Clemens’ perjury trial attacked the
credibility of the star prosecution witness on Wednesday,
asking, “Do you sometimes just make stuff up?”
As Clemens’ former trainer Brian McNamee shifted in the
witness chair, defense lawyer Rusty Hardin attacked McNamee’s
motives and recollection of injecting Clemens with
performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, 2000 and 2001.
The ex-trainer said Clemens had asked him if he still had a
source for anabolic steroids in early 2004, while the pitcher
was briefly retired before a comeback with the Houston Astros.
That conflicted with a statement McNamee gave investigators when
he said his last steroid-related conversation with Clemens was
in August 2001.
“Mr. McNamee, do you sometimes just make stuff up?” Hardin
asked. “Is that a true statement or did you make it up?”
His voice barely audible, McNamee said: “I didn’t make
anything up.”
McNamee’s allegations in U.S. District Court are at the core
of prosecution charges that Clemens, one of baseball’s greatest
pitchers, lied to Congress in 2008 about using anabolic steroids
and human growth hormone.
Under cross-examination from Hardin, McNamee said he had
made mistakes, been forgetful or lied intentionally about the
use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
Hardin attacked McNamee’s story that Clemens had approached
him to inject him with steroids while with the Toronto Blue Jays
in 1998 shortly after McNamee had joined the team as strength
coach.
McNamee, 45, said he did not know if Clemens had been
referring to steroids when he mentioned he needed him to give
him a “booty shot,” an injection in the buttocks.
“THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED”
“Are you telling us that this man who had had this storied
career … asked somebody that he had only known for two months,
out of all the people in the world, to all of a sudden give him
a steroid shot?” Hardin asked.
“That’s what happened,” McNamee said.
McNamee also could not recall details of conversations he
said he had overheard among Blue Jays players about drug use.
The conversations had led him to believe Clemens was using
steroids.
“The jury has to rely on your memory of some vague
conversations that you just don’t remember?” Hardin asked.
“Yes, sir,” McNamee answered.
Hardin asked McNamee if he was taking medication or if there
other factors that would hurt his memory.
“I’m fine,” McNamee said.
Clemens’ lawyers also are expected to explore McNamee’s
alleged problems with alcohol and scrapes with law enforcement.
Hardin raised the issue of whether McNamee tried to profit
from his testimony to investigators and a 2007 probe of use in
baseball that named Clemens and other players as steroid users.
Grilled by Hardin, McNamee could recall few details about
now-scrapped publication plans for his ghost-written
autobiography.
Clemens, 49, is being tried for a second time on federal
charges of lying in 2008 to the U.S. House of Representatives’
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was
investigating drug use in Major League Baseball. His first trial
ended in a mistrial last year.
Clemens was known as “The Rocket” during a career that ran
from 1984 to 2997. He won the Cy Young Award seven times and is
among the biggest names implicated in drug use in baseball.
McNamee worked with Clemens when the right-hander pitched
for the Toronto Blue Jays and later with the New York Yankees.
He also was employed as Clemens’ personal trainer.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Eric Beech and Bill
Trott)
