- Oct 25, 2010
- 3,049
- 2
- 0
scribe said:
I accidentally ran him into a trash dumpster during the final sprint of a crit when we were juniors. He was trying to come around me right when I was making a heroic move of my own. Them safety cones only work if you've got someplace to go around.
- Aug 13, 2009
- 12,854
- 2
- 0
thehog
BANNED
- Jul 27, 2009
- 31,285
- 2
- 22,485
The news reports are interesting but theHog still maintains it means little.
Doesn't matter if the entire case file had photos of Armstrong laundering money, snorting coke and harming animals. Its not going forward. Everything else is just noise and ancillary that he walked. And after sometime he can begin coming back into the limelight.
Doesn't matter if the entire case file had photos of Armstrong laundering money, snorting coke and harming animals. Its not going forward. Everything else is just noise and ancillary that he walked. And after sometime he can begin coming back into the limelight.
Dr. Maserati
BANNED
- Jun 19, 2009
- 13,250
- 1
- 0
- Aug 13, 2009
- 12,854
- 2
- 0
thehog said:
There has been no indication that the Qui Tam case is dead. If it is still on then the Civil division gets all of the Non-Grand Jury evidence from the Criminal division. Civil charges also have a lower burden of proof then criminal. If it is going forward then it can't be good.
WADA/USADA seem pretty focused on bringing a case against Lance
thehog
BANNED
- Jul 27, 2009
- 31,285
- 2
- 22,485
Race Radio said:
Qui Tam requires a tremendous amount of legal nous & manouving. Not to mention a funding stream to pay for counsel.
USADA/WADA at the moment have nothing. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Will they get anything? Maybe. Anything of worth? Probably not.
That's where we stand today. Not so good is it.
People who know me understand I wanted the true light to come forth. I've been fighting this one way or another since 1999.
But there you have it. I think even supporters of Armstrong feel dumbfounded. No one really knows what to say or how to frame it. It feels so "unfinished" but it is.
It's over.
- Aug 13, 2009
- 12,854
- 2
- 0
thehog said:
That depends. If the Fed's "Join' The case then they will pay and run the case. As far as I can tell it has not been reported if they have joined the case or not.
thehog said:
Two ways to interpret this:
1) If you of all people say it’s over, it really must be.
2) Reverse psychology. If all your predictions of indictments didn’t come to pass, maybe your predictions of its being finished won’t, either.
No offense, but I’m hoping for no. 2.
But have to agree on qui tam. Almost never happens without the feds cooperation.
LarryBudMelman
BANNED
- Aug 31, 2011
- 329
- 0
- 0
BotanyBay said:
Because it goes against the "business interests."
Nothing will be sold by nailing Armstrong.
Delusional "positive" people don't like feel bad stories.
Armstrong is one of the most cynical motherfcukers who's ever lived.
Election year and Obama didn't want to nail down the fact that there is no Santa Claus to a country that's already teetering and Armstrong has made himself into an "establishment" figure even though most here know it's bs.
The whole episode forces people to look in the mirror and most people just don't want to take a good hard honest look. I think some of the European posters captured that better than the Americans here could.
JV has a lot to answer for here I believe. The guy could have spoken forcefully about what he knew and what a cancer armstrong is, but he made a calculation and hedged. Now he will always be LA's b!tch when he could have mounted a frontal assault... His reward is to have his team in the cesspool that is pro cycling. Congrats!
As I understand it, whistle-blower cases are sealed until the feds decide whether to join. Either way, the defendant is notified at that time if the feds join or if the private party decides to go ahead. If the feds decline to join and the suit continues, the feds can jump in later if they think it is going well.Race Radio said:
I don't think there is any reason to believe that the case has gone forward. Clearly the feds are not pursuing it now, because to win at least some law has to have been broken, and at the moment, the feds have declared that they aren't bringing charges.
Based on what we know, there's a simple reason that the case isn't going forward: Tailwind didn't defraud the USPS, and even if illegal acts were carried out during the contract, the USPS lost nothing. Their sponsorship worked out to the highest possible benefit of the USPS--the exposure of their brand could not have been better. It's hard to see where damages would lie.
Here in the Clinic, we have a persistent incorrect notion that the contract stipulated no doping. In fact it only stipulated that Tailwind must ensure that the rider contracts permitted the dismissal of riders found to be doping. If a rider was found to be doping, the contract require that "appropriate" action be taken. Additionally, there are two ways related to doping in which Tailwind could be deemed in default. Neither of these happened; no rider was found to be doping (if one had, "immediate action", again of an unspecified nature, needed to be taken), nor did any negative publicity arise related to doping or other morals related events. Of course the contract had a term, and it ended December 31, 2004. By definition, no default took place because neither party alleged such.
So there is no possibility of a successful civil action. Of course, we don't know what criminal activities may have taken place, although in my opinion, nothing credible has been suggested. Selling team bicycles is not a crime. Money laundering of course is, but paying for a "program" probably wasn't done so directly.
There also been a lot of talk about whether Armstrong was a director, or if he lied about his ownership. I think most of this talk stems from posters who aren't aware of the differences between large publicly held companies and small privately held companies. In a small private corporation, the investors typically get preferred stock, and the management/talent are granted common stock or more commonly options for common stock. Only the preferred stock holders have voting rights, and the votes are apportioned according to the investment percentage. I certainly don't know, but a good guess is that Thom Weisel held >51% of Tailwind, or controlled a parent shell corporation that held >51%. In that case, for nearly all decisions, excepting modifications to the corporate charter, he would hold complete power. Again, I don't know about Tailwind, but I do know about private corporations. Contrary to public companies, a board seat need not confer any power or knowledge of the operations.
Armstrong would likely have not invested (much) money, but he could easily have had options with an "earn out" provision. That is, his share of ownership might change depending on the level of profit in a given year, or on the value of Tailwind at the time of a liquidity event. These provisions are common, and so the question "what percentage do you own" is not directly answerable. I was involved in one such arrangement in which the formula for earn out was sufficiently complicated that about 2 hours was needed to explain it.
On a separate topic, it is hard for me to justify any sense that the rug was pulled out from under Novitsky. Take the Balco case, which has some parallels. The grand jury was empanelled soon after the raid on Balco-- about October of 2003. The athletes completed their testimony by the end of the year, and indictments against the 3 Balco guys and Anderson came out in early February. Somewhere between 4 and 5 months. And they all spent some time in the pokey. Compare that to the indictment of Bonds on (as I recall) 27 counts of various crimes. That grand jury needed the full 24 months to get out the indictments. I think the very long time the GJ spent was a predictor of the outcome-- tried for 3 counts of perjury and 1 of obstruction of justice. In spite of the reality that everyone knows that Bonds lied about whether he injected himself and whether he knew he was taking steroids, the government had a very difficult time demonstrating perjury. The point is that if an indictment takes as long as the one involving Armstrong was taking, the case isn't very provable. And a case that isn't shaping up very well, coupled with the shambles of the Bonds and Clemens cases, leads to dropping the investigation. Novitsky and company shouldn't be complaining about the decision; if they had a good case they could have brought it already--before someone else made the decision to quit. On the other hand, it must be immensely frustrating to Novitsky to be quite sure that laws were broken, and broken by someone for whom he undoubtedly has a personal distaste.
- May 14, 2010
- 5,303
- 4
- 0
ChrisE said:
Anyplace where someone named Goober has everybody worked up is a place that needs to take a hard look at itself.
I'm afraid you've missed my point completely. For this case, with its money spent, and with its multi-year, multi-agency, multi-country investigation, to be peremptorily called off in the eleventh hour by one man against the advise and wishes of his investigators, smacks of cronyism and political payoffs. It's at best a public relations nightmare, and quite possibly a crime on its own, casting the Justice Department, and by extension the Obama administration, in a very poor light. Just as we enter the election season.
I think that in the face of possible corruption on the part of a few people, plenty can be done and pressure applied by ****ed off investigators from other agencies (and pols from other parties). It would take concerted conspiracy at the highest levels to put the damper on these guys once they get the bit between their teeth. Armstrong, Boxer, and a few people in the Justice Department don't qualify.
KingsMountain said:
Then why was an extension granted? The GJ was convened in May or June of 2010, and from my understanding should have run its course of eighteen months in November or December of last year. There was talk about this here at the time, and everyone assumed they had been granted a six month extension, which sometimes happens in such cases (like Bonds, apparently).
Surely if the investigation was not going to come up with anything provable, it would have been clear by the end of the eighteen months. Wouldn’t it be much easier just to let that period run its natural course, rather than abruptly pull the plug shortly after a continuance was granted?
You also seem to be ignoring media reports that Novitsky was notified a bar half an hour before the announcement. We don't know for sure how it all went down, but based on that, it sure sounds to me like a case of the rug being pulled out. There is also the timing. It’s blatantly obvious that Friday of SB weekend was picked to minimize the media impact of the announcement. Of course that doesn’t mean that some higher up was trying to prevent a provable case from going forward, but it does indicate very strongly that Birotte and others were aware that this would be a very unpopular decision. If LA is such a feel-good story, what would be unpopular about the decision not to investigate him further? Certainly sounds to me that Birotte felt the announcement was something that should be hushed up as much as possible.
MI,
Of course the timing of the announcement was chosen to minimize impact. Conversely that agency and others will schedule the announcement of indictments to maximize impact. Saying anything about the cessation of an investigation is unusual, only done in relatively high profile cases, and nobody involved is happy about such events. The best one can conclude is the investigators didn't do a very good job, either failing to adequately demonstrate guilt or being wrong about the guilt in the first place.
The idea that Novitsky was only informed 30 minutes before the announcement has to be a half-truth. Of course stopping the investigation has been under discussion, and we can be sure that Novitsky was under pressure to come up with a smoking gun. However, while his input would be important, it's not his decision. The timing of the decision--a deadline to decide-- was dictated by the desire to make a low impact announcement. Birotte and his management team could have decided to drop sooner, and informed Novitsky earlier, but it is better to wait until the last minute to decide so that the decision is as informed as possible.
Is eighteen months enough to determine the quality of the evidence? How about a year or 6 months or 24 months? Any of these could be right; it depends on the details. My point is simply that the longer it takes the more likely it is that the case is weak. I also doubt that it is much effort to extend a GJ, and 18 months is not much better than 16 or 20 months for a stopping point.
Of course the timing of the announcement was chosen to minimize impact. Conversely that agency and others will schedule the announcement of indictments to maximize impact. Saying anything about the cessation of an investigation is unusual, only done in relatively high profile cases, and nobody involved is happy about such events. The best one can conclude is the investigators didn't do a very good job, either failing to adequately demonstrate guilt or being wrong about the guilt in the first place.
The idea that Novitsky was only informed 30 minutes before the announcement has to be a half-truth. Of course stopping the investigation has been under discussion, and we can be sure that Novitsky was under pressure to come up with a smoking gun. However, while his input would be important, it's not his decision. The timing of the decision--a deadline to decide-- was dictated by the desire to make a low impact announcement. Birotte and his management team could have decided to drop sooner, and informed Novitsky earlier, but it is better to wait until the last minute to decide so that the decision is as informed as possible.
Is eighteen months enough to determine the quality of the evidence? How about a year or 6 months or 24 months? Any of these could be right; it depends on the details. My point is simply that the longer it takes the more likely it is that the case is weak. I also doubt that it is much effort to extend a GJ, and 18 months is not much better than 16 or 20 months for a stopping point.
Sorry, my job doesn't allow me to keep pace with discussion here.
Is it possible that the key witnesses were not consistent? That while some (Tyler, Floyd) told all, some perjured themselves greatly? That is a mess for a prosecutor to deal with. Let's say 10 key witness from the sport. 5 say they personally saw Lance dope, got the stuff from him, and were more or less forced to join the team program. These 5 also implicate the other 5 for the exact same facts. Yet, when they testify, they deny all and just express they don't want to be victim of their former team mates' dirty game to drag clean better riders down along with them.
The prosecutor then has at least 5 witnesses which set themselves up for jail. Just, which ones?
Is it possible that the key witnesses were not consistent? That while some (Tyler, Floyd) told all, some perjured themselves greatly? That is a mess for a prosecutor to deal with. Let's say 10 key witness from the sport. 5 say they personally saw Lance dope, got the stuff from him, and were more or less forced to join the team program. These 5 also implicate the other 5 for the exact same facts. Yet, when they testify, they deny all and just express they don't want to be victim of their former team mates' dirty game to drag clean better riders down along with them.
The prosecutor then has at least 5 witnesses which set themselves up for jail. Just, which ones?
TRENDING THREADS
-
Teams & Riders The Remco Evenepoel is the next Eddy Merckx thread- Started by DNP-Old
- Replies: 36K
-
Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread- Started by Lequack
- Replies: 41K
-
Teams & Riders The Great Big Cycling Transfers, Extensions, and Rumours Thread- Started by RedheadDane
- Replies: 13K
-
Il Lombardia 2025, monument, October 11- Started by Krzysztof_O
- Replies: 792
-
-
-
Teams & Riders Everybody needs a little bit of Roglstomp in their lives- Started by johnymax
- Replies: 23K
Latest posts
-
Teams & Riders The Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe team thread
- Latest: Krzysztof_O
-
-
-
-
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram