Justice department set to go postal on Lance

THE FAMOUS U.S. Postal Service declaration says its couriers won’t be stopped by “snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.”

Now you can add Lance Armstrong to that list.

Late Monday night, the Justice Department filed hundreds of pages of court documents as part of its demand that the disgraced cyclist return taxpayer sponsorship money he took from the USPS under a contractual agreement (and amid hundreds of public promises by Armstrong) that he would never use banned drugs and blood transfusions.

“The U.S. Postal Service paid more than $40 million to associate its brand with Lance Armstrong: American hero. Instead, it unwittingly tied its brand to Lance Armstrong: doper, dealer, and liar,” the government’s lawyers wrote. “The latter, naturally, held no value to the USPS.”

The six-year-old case could potentially go to trial within the coming year at the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., the same courthouse where Armstrong’s fellow Texan Roger Clemens faced a painful, hard-fought trial in 2012, and was acquitted.

Armstrong’s attorneys also filed papers. They say the Justice Department’s attempt to claw back its money under the False Claims Act is “procedurally improper.”

Armstrong’s attorneys say that other than noting that Armstrong rode for the USPS team, the government has failed to submit evidence on Armstrong’s conduct with regard to the sponsorship agreement. They note the government’s case centers on 42 invoices from Tailwind — the company behind Armstrong’s teams — to the USPS between 2000 and 2004.

“With his opposition, Armstrong has supplied testimony from the government’s own witnesses establishing that he had nothing to do with the submission of Tailwind’s invoices to the Postal Service and no role at all in the payment of those invoices,” write Armstrong’s lawyers in their brief.

The court filings are responses to motions for summary judgment, and they arrive after the long discovery phase of the case has finally come to an end. Armstrong, his former teammates, and other intimate friends gave sworn depositions.

Sections of some of those are attached to Monday’s motions, along with dozens of documents including emails from Armstrong’s agents and breakdowns of Armstrong’s earnings.

When Armstrong finally confessed to doping in 2012 he was stripped of his Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life. He has since settled a number of smaller lawsuits, but has fought the government’s case at every turn, admitting publicly that losing it will ruin him.

A co-plaintiff in the case is Floyd Landis, the former teammate who in 2010 decided to admit to his own doping and explain to cycling officials, anti-doping agencies and federal investigators how Armstrong’s cover-up had worked. Last month Landis opened a legal cannabis business in Colorado called “Floyd’s of Leadville.”

If Armstrong loses, a portion of what the government earns will go to Landis, who has whistleblower status under the provisions of the False Claims Act, which provides rewards for people who expose schemes to defraud the federal government.

“No sponsor who knew the truth about how Armstrong achieved his apparent Tour de France victories would have paid any amount of money to sponsor him or his team,” the government says. “In the final analysis, Armstrong induced the USPS to pay him and his associates more than $40 million by lying about his and the team’s doping, and the USPS is now publicly and indelibly linked to one of the biggest sports scandals in history. This clearly was not what the USPS bargained or paid for.”

But Armstrong’s attorneys have argued that the USPS got what it paid for and more. In court briefs they’ve laid out a meticulous argument that Armstrong’s phenomenal success brought substantial benefits to the USPS brand that Armstrong wore in most of his victorious spins around the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

The Bay Area attorneys from the firm Keker and Van Nest — who previously scored some big courtroom victories in the BALCO saga — have conducted depositions of a wide range of USPS employees who were somehow involved in the Postal Service sponsorship.

The U.S. government formed a grand jury to consider criminal charges against Armstrong and his teams, but never issued an indictment. The current case is a civil whistleblower action, joined by the Justice Department. The whistleblower is Landis.

Some of the evidence from the criminal case is being used against Armstrong in the civil case. So are several books and movies that have shed light on the long and sophisticated cover-up.