Roger Clemens Will Receive Presidential Pardon Due to His Republican Connections

The strange spectacle of Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform praising Roger Clemens and attacking his former trainer Brian McNamee became clearer today, when one of the members of the McNamee's legal team, Richard D. Emery of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abadyhttp://www.ecbalaw.com/attorneys/emery.html, predicted that Clemens is lobbying for a pardon from President Bush George W. Bush. Clemens had lobbied the members of the Committee before the Wednesday hearing, meeting with the Congressmen and their staffs. His lobbying efforts included signing autographs for Congressional staffers.

Most of the Democrats on the Committee, including Chairman Henry Waxman (D-California), were harder on Roger Clemens than were their brethren from the other side of the aisle. Many of the Republicans praised Clemens as a hero, and their logic seemed to be that as a hero, Clemens had to be believed, whereas the unsavory Brian McNamee, as a chronic liar, not only couldn't be trusted but was actually lying under oath at the hearing.

Brian McNamee was severely criticicized by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), Rep. Dan Burton ( R-Indiana), Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina), and Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut), who called McNamee a "drug dealer." Burton excoriated McNamee as a pathological liar, accusing him of telling "lie after lie after lie after lie." Foxx, after denouncing the hearing, produced photographic evidence of Roger Clemens throughout his career, making the point that he had not changed physically, over time, so couldn't have been on the juice.