Grand jury investigating Bonds for perjury

[Reds4Life]

Barry's problems look like they are getting worse, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12307787/

NBCSports.com news services
Updated: 9:33 p.m. ET April 13, 2006
Barry Bonds apparently isn't done with grand juries just yet.

A federal grand jury has been hearing testimony for more than a month on whether Bonds committed perjury when he testified before a different grand jury in the BALCO investigation on Dec. 4, 2003, CNN reported Thursday, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Bonds, who ranks third in career home runs with 708, has repeatedly denied knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs, reportedly saying in his grand jury testimony that he thought substances given to him by personal trainer Greg Anderson were flaxseed oil and cream.

Bonds and the other athletes were given immunity by federal prosecutors in the 2003 proceeding, provided they told the truth on the stand.

According to CNN, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco would neither confirm nor deny that a grand jury has been hearing testimony about Bonds and the player's lawyers were unaware that a grand jury had been convened, said Harry Stern, a spokesman for his legal team.

“Game of Shadows,” a book by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, detailed alleged extensive steroid use by Bonds and other baseball stars when it came out in March.

Bonds has sued the authors to try to block them from making any money on the book, which his attorneys say was based on illegally obtained grand jury transcripts.

In the wake of the controversy over the book, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig appointed George Mitchell, a former U.S. Senate majority leader and federal judge, to investigate steroid use in baseball.

[KronoRed]

Can he sue them too?

[savafan]

Bonds personal doctor has been subpoenaed before this grand jury.

This is the beginning of the fall, it has to be. Something tells me this is coming out now because they finally have the damning evidence they need.

[savafan]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NG23I96GR1.DTL

Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, April 14, 2006

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed the personal surgeon for Barry Bonds to testify in its investigation of whether the Giants outfielder committed perjury in 2003 when he denied under oath that he had ever taken steroids, The Chronicle has learned.

Dr. Arthur Ting, the physician who treated Bonds for the knee injury that sidelined him for most of the 2005 season, has been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury in U.S. District Court in San Francisco later this month, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

The sources asked not to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the grand jury investigation.

Contacted by phone, Ting referred a reporter to his lawyer, Daniel Alberti.

"Dr. Ting always has been cooperative with the U.S. attorney's office, and Dr. Ting will continue to be cooperative," Alberti said.

The Giants organization declined to comment. Bonds was not available for comment, and his attorney, Michael Rains, said he was "not prepared to respond to that information."

The sources described the grand jury's investigation as an offshoot of the federal steroids case involving the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, a nutritional supplements concern in Burlingame.

Four men, including Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid-distribution charges last year as part of what prosecutors said was an international conspiracy to corrupt sports by providing undetectable steroids to elite athletes. The drugs were distributed by BALCO and Anderson.

In the early stages of the investigation, a grand jury subpoenaed at least 30 elite athletes who had been customers of BALCO -- Bonds among them.

In December 2003, as previously reported in The Chronicle, Bonds told the BALCO grand jury that he had never used steroids.

But in his testimony, he acknowledged that his trainer had supplied him with flaxseed oil and arthritis balm -- substances that matched the description of "the clear" and "the cream," two undetectable performance-enhancing drugs distributed by BALCO.

The sources said federal investigators believed Bonds lied under oath in part because documents seized in government raids on BALCO and on his trainer's home included doping calendars that appeared to reflect Bonds' drug use.

In March 2005, a former girlfriend of Bonds, Kimberly Bell, told the grand jury that Bonds admitted to her that he used steroids beginning in 1999, The Chronicle has reported previously.

Since then, the government has continued to question witnesses regarding Bonds and steroids in its investigation -- which includes looking into whether he testified truthfully -- and a grand jury began taking testimony last month, two sources said.

Bonds' lawyer, Rains, said that last month he contacted the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco to find out whether it had completed any investigation involving Bonds.

"I got the typical federal answer: 'We're not going to say one way or another,' " Rains said.

Rains has maintained throughout the investigation that the government was out to get Bonds. "It's always been the U.S. versus Bonds, and they're always just gunning for the big guy," the lawyer said in March 2005.

Ting is of interest to investigators because he has visited BALCO with Bonds, the sources said. In September 2003, a BALCO employee told federal investigators that around that time, Ting had accompanied Bonds to the lab and had drawn his blood for testing.

The doctor has been Bonds' personal surgeon for much of the outfielder's San Francisco career. In 1999, when Bonds suffered a serious elbow injury, Ting operated to repair the damage. Last year, Ting performed three operations on Bonds' ailing knee -- two to repair torn cartilage and a third to combat an infection that had developed after the surgery.

Ting's patients include many elite athletes, and he is among the best-known orthopedists in the region. But public records show he has twice been disciplined by the state Medical Board.

In 1996, Ting was put on probation after he allegedly allowed a medical technician to diagnose injuries and write prescriptions. He ultimately admitted only to improperly failing to diagnose and treat a patient's elbow dislocation.

In 2004, the board put Ting on probation, this time after he was accused of prescribing drugs to friends and keeping inadequate records. Ting acknowledged he was "negligent in his supervision of subordinates" but denied wrongdoing on the other issues.

The probe of Bonds is the latest twist in a case that has grabbed headlines, mostly because of BALCO's celebrity clientele.

In a statement to federal agents at the time they raided his laboratory in September 2003, BALCO founder Victor Conte identified 27 stars of baseball, football, and Olympic track and field to whom he said he was providing designer steroids. Some of the drugs were created to be undetectable on conventional steroid tests.

Among the athletes Conte named were New York Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, track and field superstar Marion Jones and Bonds. Conte later renounced the statement, but his top assistant at BALCO, James Valente, also gave a statement to federal investigators in which he said Bonds and Giambi had been provided BALCO drugs through Bonds' personal trainer, Anderson.

Conte, Valente, Anderson and veteran track coach Remi Korchemny were indicted on steroid conspiracy charges in 2004. But steroid dealing carried relatively light penalties under federal law, and the cases were settled with plea bargains last year. Conte served four months in federal prison, and Anderson served three months. They are now under house arrest. Valente and Korchemny were put on probation.

But investigators continued to pursue the case, and in November, an Illinois chemist, Patrick Arnold, was indicted for allegedly creating one of the undetectable steroids that BALCO had distributed. After Arnold's indictment, the sources said, the investigators continued an inquiry into the truth of Bonds' 2003 grand jury testimony.

[redsfan30]

Does it make me a bad person if I am rooting for his conviction?

[Tommyjohn25]

Does it make me a bad person if I am rooting for his conviction?

If rooting for him to be thrown in the slammer is wrong, then I don't wanna be right.

[dman]

Even if he doesn't get thrown in the slammer, just get him the heck out of MLB

[savafan]

There usually isn't a federal grand jury unless there is hard evidence already in hand.

[Matt700wlw]

Does it make me a bad person if I am rooting for his conviction?

If it does, than I'm bad too...

[KronoRed]

Even if he doesn't get thrown in the slammer, just get him the heck out of MLB

Short of him being thrown in the slammer MLB won't do a thing

[savafan]

Short of him being thrown in the slammer MLB won't do a thing

At some point, I think they will have to. Public outcry will demand it.

[buckshotrod]

This is the out MLB has been looking for. Now they can alleviate themselves of this cancer should he be indicted. this is huge to be in troble with the Feds.

Bottom line is it is too bad as he never needed the stuff, nor did Sammy, Rafael, etc etc.

[savafan]

Bottom line is it is too bad as he never needed the stuff, nor did Sammy, Rafael, etc etc.

I'll give you Bonds, but if you look at this thread you'll see how much the juice helped Sosa and Palmeiro.