Feds jab at cyclist
In a scathing filing, the U.S. government calls Lance Armstrong a ‘doper, dealer, and liar,’
The federal government has fired off another scathing rebuke against Lance Armstrong, calling the former cyclist “a doper, dealer, and liar” who abused his position and power to enhance his legacy, status and fortune.
It is seeking nearly $100 million in damages and Monday filed a withering 59-page document to press its case.
“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,” Justice Department attorneys wrote.
The government is suing Armstrong for fraud and other claims on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service, which paid more than $40 million to sponsor his cycling team more than a decade ago.
In April, Armstrong ’s attorneys asked a judge to throw out the government’s case in summary judgment, saying it was misguided and essentially worthless. The government responded to that request with its filing Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
“Armstrong ’s motion for summary judgment should be denied in its entirety, and this Court should set a date for trial,” government attorneys wrote.
It’s the latest trading of blows between two heavyweights, the United States vs. Lance Armstrong, in a civil case that’s been roiling since 2013, shortly after Armstrong confessed to using banned drugs and blood transfusions to boost his performance on the bike.
The government says Armstrong ’s cycling team violated its USPS sponsorship contracts by doping and then concealed it in order to continue payment. In April, the government also asked the court to determine in summary judgment that Armstrong ’s cycling team owner received $32.3 million from the USPS from 2000 to 2004 based on 41 claims for payment.
Under the False Claims Act, the government could get that money back times three if its case succeeds — nearly $100 million, with Armstrong possibly on the hook for all of it.
Armstrong ’s attorneys asked the court Monday to reject the government’s request to establish those payment figures as fact, saying the request was improper and Armstrong didn’t have anything to do with submitting the invoices. The contract was between USPS and the cycling team’s owner, Tailwind Sports, a company that dissolved in 2007.
“The evidence is crystal clear,” Armstrong ’s attorneys wrote. “Armstrong had no role in causing the submission of invoices to the USPS for payment under the Sponsorship Agreements, nor did he have any role in the government’s payment of those invoices.”
Armstrong ’s attorneys at the firm Keker & Van Nest also have argued the Postal Service was not damaged by the doping and instead received far more in positive publicity and other benefits from the deal than what it paid out.
One expert hired by Armstrong ’s attorneys estimated USPS received at least $333 million in benefits from the sponsorship from 1998 through 2004.
The government ripped that notion Monday.
“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,” government attorneys wrote. “This clearly was not what the USPS bargained or paid for.”
The government also said, “Armstrong ’s claims about the value of the benefits resulting from the sponsorship rest on a patchwork of unreliable data and half-truths, untethered to any economic or legal principle.”
The government says the val- ue of the sponsorship was zero, because nobody would have sponsored him if the truth were known about his doping.
“Although the record clearly demonstrates that Armstrong ’s use and encouragement of doping destroyed the market value of the USPS sponsorship, Armstrong nevertheless argues that the USPS suffered no damages because it received certain consequential benefits from that sponsorship during the period that everyone was duped into believing he was riding clean,” the government wrote.
“However, these consequential benefits do not entitle Armstrong to any credit as a legal matter, and as a factual matter these claimed benefits are both overstated, and swamped by the negative consequential harms that occurred (and continue to occur) following the disclosure of his cheating.”
“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.” Justice Department attorneys, in Monday’s filing against Lance Armstrong