The federal government is not pulling any punches on Lance Armstrong.
In a 59-page report filed Monday, the U.S. Justice Department called Lance Armstrong “a doper, dealer and liar” and announced it is seeking $100 million in damages from the former cyclist, according to USA Today.
The government’s basic premise is that because Armstrong was lying about competing clean throughout his cycling career, he is not entitled to the sponsorship money he earned.
Via USA Today:
“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,”U.S. 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.
PEDs are bad, and lying about PEDs while destroying the careers of skeptics is also bad, but maybe we’re taking this a little too far here? The guy was taking illegal drugs, not building nuclear weapons or something. It’s pretty tough to see how Armstrong’s crimes caused $100 million in damages to anyone.
The government is trying to say USPS would never have sponsored Armstrong if it had known he was cheating, an argument that falls apart when you consider that the USPS team was systematically doping as a unit and that numerous, maybe even most, of its riders were taking a regiment of PEDs.
Check out this paragraph from the Justice Department’s report, again via USA Today:
“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.”
As this passage points out, Armstrong’s drug-fueled success brought massive profit and publicity to USPS (as well as all of Armstrong’s other sponsors). Everyone associated with Armstrong benefited from his doping, and it seems absurd to now cast USPS as a victim when it was reaping in the spoils of its star’s Tour de France victories.
The fact that Armstrong almost certainly wouldn’t be able to pay out anything close to $100 million makes this seem even more like a witch hunt. You’d think maybe the Feds had learned from their previous failures to nail down Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, but apparently not.
