BALCO lawyer pleads guilty to leaking grand jury info

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

By Karen Gullo

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) — A lawyer pleaded guilty to disclosing grand-jury testimony of Barry Bonds and two other baseball players to reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle who wrote about steroid use among professional athletes.

Troy Ellerman pleaded guilty to making the leak, lying about it, obstructing justice and disobeying a court order not to disclose grand jury information, according to a plea agreement filed today in federal court in San Francisco.

Ellerman let Chronicle reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada take verbatim notes “of the transcripts of grand jury testimony of baseball players Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield” in November 2004, according to a criminal complaint filed today.

Federal prosecutors had been searching for the source of the leaks, which led to contempt findings against two Chronicle reporters. Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams wrote in December 2004 that Bonds told the grand jury he might have unknowingly used substances containing steroids. Bonds, who has denied using steroids, said he thought the substances were flax seed oil and a legal ointment, according to the articles.

Ellerman was a defense attorney in the criminal case against employees of Bay Area Co-operative Laboratory, known as Balco, the California lab at the center of a federal probe into steroid use among athletes.

Scott Tedmon, Ellerman's lawyer, and Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, declined to comment.

The case is U.S. v Troy Ellerman, 07-0080, U.S. District Court, San Francisco.

[T Park]

congrats.

your now disbarred