March 01, 2008
Bonds Testimony
The AP published snippets of Barry Bonds's grand jury testimony. The Smoking Gun has the PDF of the full testimony.
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Posted by David Pinto at
10:21 AM
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Wow! I just read about the first half of the
Bonds transcript and two things kinda jump out at me:
1. The US attorneys are terrible. I've read many transcripts...and these guys simply did a really crappy job. Very poorly worded questions, total lack of logic or progression on a topic, failure to fully follow up questions, etc. Seems like they spent about 15 minutes or less of prep time before they started the questions.
2. Bonds really might be innocent here. Until now I never, ever believed for one second that he did not know what he was getting from Balco. But, now I'm not so sure. Bonds really might have trusted Anderson. Maybe he just did what he was asked and thought the blood/urine tests were to see if he was low on zinc, etc. That does not mean that he did not use PED before he started with Anderson, of course.
It's impossible to follow some lines of questioning even when re-reading a few times real slow-like. Multiple questions combined into one, jumping around back and forth in time and from one subject to another within that same jumbled sequence, unexamined assumptions and inferences buried in the core of multiple questions, etc.
Combined with the fact that, unlike all other witnesses before this grand jury, Bonds and his attorneys only saw the documents and evidence to be covered an hour before his testimony (other witnesses had access to the evidence to be covered days or weeks in advance), the course of questioning seems designed solely to confuse and trap Bonds, not to develop evidence against Anderson, Conte, and BALCO.
Except they were too clever or inept by half even in pursuit of that goal. Without Anderson playing McNamee's role, they left themselves with little that proves their perjury case, which is that Bonds used substances provided by Anderson that he knew to be steroids and HGH at particular times and before specific times.
Bizarre, especially since Novitsky in particular made it known that his goal was to bust Bonds, and that busting BALCO, Conte, and the rest were mere means to that end. Given the known evidence, a first year law student could have devised a line of questioning that would have far more clearly established essential facts and confronted Bonds, assuming guilt, with a clear choice between demonstrable perjury and truth. What complete screwups.
The feds will be extraordinarily lucky to get a conviction on any count at trial, and Dennis Riordan's presence on the defense team (he drafted the motion upheld here) makes it almost impossible to believe that any such a conviction would withstand appeal.