Prosecutors say Bonds failed drug test in 2000

UPDATED: Prosecutors say Bonds failed drug test in 2000

February 14, 2008

By A.J. Perez and Bob Nightengale

USA TODAY

USA TODAY has confirmed that the document filed by the Department of Justice earlier Thursday contained a mistyped date. The updated story follows.

Federal prosecutors will provide evidence at trial that Barry Bonds failed a steroids test in November 2000.

In a 23-page motion filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Thursday, prosecutors seeking to convict Bonds on perjury and obstruction of justice charges will assert he was using steroids supplied to him by his friend and personal trainer Greg Anderson.

The motion was filed in response to Bonds' request to dismiss a grand jury indictment against him alleging perjury and obstruction of justice.

"At trial, the government's evidence will show that Bonds received steroids from Anderson in the period before the November (2000) positive drug test, and that evidence raises the inference that Anderson gave Bonds the steroids that caused him to test positive in November (2000) ," U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello wrote.

Joshua Eaton, a spokesman for the Deptartment of Justice, acknowledged an erroneous reference in Thursday's filing to a November 2001 failed drug test. He confirmed that the failed drug test was in November 2000.

Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger, set the single-season home run record in 2001. In August 2007, he broke Hank Aaron's single-season home run record and finished the season with 762.

But on Nov. 15, he was indicted on five counts of allegedly lying to a federal grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. Bonds testified that he never knowingly took steroids.

The issue of dismissal is to be argued Feb. 29.

Russoniello laid out his strategy on why each count — which could send Bonds to prison for up to 30 years — should stand.

"The evidence at trial will show, each count charges that Bonds repeatedly lied in answering the same question or questions on the same subject matter," Russoniello wrote.

Bonds told prosecutors that he had not received "the clear" and "the cream" until the end of 2002, a claim Russoniello wrote was a lie.

"For the foregoing reasons, Bonds's motion. .. should be denied," he wrote.