HOUSTON — A federal judge dismissed most of Roger Clemens’ defamation lawsuit against his former personal trainer on Thursday, saying statements made in the Mitchell Report on doping in baseball are protected.
Brian McNamee has told federal agents, baseball investigator George Mitchell and a House of Representatives committee that he injected Clemens more than a dozen times with steroids and human growth hormone from 1998-2001.
McNamee’s attorneys said Clemens’ lawsuit should be thrown out because McNamee was compelled to cooperate by federal investigators.
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison agreed.
Clemens has repeatedly denied McNamee’s accusations and sued last year. And prosecutors have asked a federal grand jury in Washington to decide whether to indict the seven-time Cy Young Award winner for lying under oath to Congress last year when he denied using steroids or HGH.
In the lawsuit, Ellison did leave in McNamee’s statements to Andy Pettitte, Clemens’ former New York Yankees teammate. McNamee told Pettitte that Clemens had used HGH and steroids.
Ellison said McNamee’s statements to Pettitte “are reasonably capable of defamatory meaning.”
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