Tejada charged with lying about drugs
Expected to plead guilty in court Wednesday on steroid issue
By Alyson Footer / MLB.com
The Washington Post reported that Tejada made misrepresentations to congressional staffers during an interview in a Baltimore hotel room regarding steroids in baseball.
Tejada is scheduled to appear at 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., court officials told the paper. The charges against Tejada were outlined in documents filed in Washington federal court on Tuesday. The documents indicate that a plea agreement has been reached with Tejada, who is expected to plead guilty according to an ESPN report. The Astros have scheduled a 4 p.m. CT news conference for Wednesday at Minute Maid Park that will be aired live on MLB.com and attended by Tejada; his lawyer, Mark Tuohey; and Tejada's agent, Diego Bentz.
A call to Tuohey from MLB.com was not immediately returned.
Tejada is not being charged with lying about the allegations concerning his own steroids use, according to the Post. Rather, prosecutors are accusing Tejada of giving false statements about his conversations with another player, former Athletics teammate Adam Piatt, about steroids and human growth hormone.
According to the Post report, Tejada faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail, but advisory sentencing guidelines call for a sentence of probation to six months behind bars.
The charges arrive a little over a year after the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into whether Tejada gave false statements to members of the same committee in 2005 about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
The allegations go back to 2005, when Rafael Palmeiro, Tejada's former teammate, attributed a positive steroid test on a vitamin B-12 injection allegedly administered to him by Tejada. Palmeiro gave that testimony while under investigation by the House Committee for possibly lying under oath about using performance-enhancing drugs.
No charges were brought against Palmeiro because the Committee couldn't find enough evidence to do so, although Tejada admitted during the investigation that he provided B-12, a known steroid masker, to Palmeiro and two other unidentified Orioles players.
In August of that same year, Tejada denied having used performance-enhancing drugs and said he was not aware of steroid use by others in baseball.
But the Mitchell Report, released in December 2007, suggests something far different. In the report, former Sen. George Mitchell said that Piatt, teammates with Tejada when they played with the Athletics, recalled providing steroids, testosterone and HGH to Tejada in 2003.
Piatt gave Mitchell cancelled checks from transactions he had with Tejada for a total of $6,300. A $3,200 check from Tejada to Piatt was dated March 21, 2003.
Alyson Footer is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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