McNamee Attorney: GOP Congressmen Should Resign

Feb. 14, 2008— -- Brian McNamee's attorney called on selected Republican congressmen to resign after the "outrageous attacks" directed at his client during Wednesday's hearing, a line of questioning that he believes was the result of baseball pitcher Roger Clemens' connections with the Bush family.

"It appeared to me, very clearly, that Republicans were carrying the water of some higher authority," said Richard Emery. "I expect it was the White House, but it could have been some other higher authority. They behaved incredibly in a partisan way. Democrats questioned both sides, but the Republicans only questioned McNamee."

As he did in the Mitchell Report, McNamee, a former Major League Baseball trainer, testified that he had injected his former employer Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, claims that Clemens refuted under oath. Numerous Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee focused much of their questioning on McNamee.

Citing Clemens' remarks that former President George H.W. Bush had told him that McNamee's accusations were "unbelievable," Emery said the only way Clemens would have testified in the presence of federal agents, led by the IRS's Jeff Novitzky, was if the legendary pitcher expected a pardon from the current President Bush.

"It struck me that, when Roger Clemens said that he had gotten the support of George Bush, and there was a lot of connection between Clemens in Houston and the Bush family, that there was more going on here than meets the eye," Emery said.

"Then, it ultimately struck me that it was strange, to say the least, that his lawyers would put him to the buzzsaw of Jeff Novitzky's prosecutors, for lying to Congress, or lying to federal officials, without having some backstop measure, that he's either been assured, or angling for, a prospective pardon before [President] Bush gets out of office. That's the only logical way that he would have gone to the hearing and taken the position he did, and taken the risks that he did."