Clemens team to attack US House role in perjury case

WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - Lawyers for Roger Clemens, on trial on charges he lied to Congress, plan to argue that U.S. lawmakers overreached when they called the former pitching ace to testify about steroids in Major League Baseball.

A day before opening arguments, prosecutors and defense lawyers squabbled on Tuesday over whether Congress had the authority to probe the use of performancing-enhancing drugs and to interview Clemens and his accuser, former trainer Brian McNamee.

Prosecutors will try to prove that Clemens took steroids and human growth hormones and then lied to Congress and obstructed its investigation into drug use in baseball.

Clemens has denied taking the drugs or lying about it.

Hearings by the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee in February 2008 followed an independent report released by Major League Baseball in which McNamee and others accused Clemens of using both substances from 1998 to 2001.

One of Clemens’ lawyers said the hearing with Clemens and McNamee testifying was beyond Congress’ purview because there was no pending, future or past legislation being discussed.

“We will be able to prove that that ship had sailed. … Now it became a question of Mr. Clemens versus Mr. McNamee,” said the pitcher’s lawyer Michael Attanasio.

Clemens’ lawyers plan to call as their first witnesses the former House parliamentarian and a former House staff member.

Prosecutors countered that the investigation by the House panel was appropriate.

“It does much broader things than just legislation, it does oversight of many things,” said prosecutor Daniel Butler.

McNamee is expected to be prosecutors’ star witness and testify about injecting the pitcher with steroids and human growth hormones repeatedly. Clemens’ team has tried to paint McNamee as a serial liar.

Judge Reggie Walton cast doubt on such a defense, saying that “it seems to me that Congress would have the authority to try to assess which view is correct.”

However, Walton deferred any decision on whether to permit the defense or to limit questioning of witnesses about it.