Fifteen years ago, the federal government sought to imprison star pitcher Roger Clemens for allegedly lying to Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs. Today, the federal government’s self-described “chief law enforcement officer” is lobbying to get him into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Roger Clemens was easily one of the few Greatest Pitchers of All Time, winning 354 Games, the Cy Young Award seven times (A Record, by a lot!), and played in six World Series, winning two! He was second to Nolan Ryan in most strikeouts, and he should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, NOW!” President Donald Trump demanded in an Aug. 24 Truth Social post, after playing a round of golf with Clemens and his son, Kacy Clemens. Trump dismissed allegations that Clemens had used PEDs.

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Despite the muscular push from Trump, Clemens faces an uphill battle. Like passing a constitutional amendment or overcoming a Senate filibuster, getting into the Hall of Fame requires a supermajority. Even though Clemens has won majorities of baseball writers’ tallies in recent years, he hasn’t been able to clear the required 75% threshold.

And having exhausted his 10 years of eligibility with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, Clemens’s HOF fate is now in the hands of the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee, which is made up of Hall of Fame players, media members, and executives. In 2022, that panel rejected both Clemens and Barry Bonds, baseball’s all-time and single-season home run king, who has also been tarred with PED allegations. Neither one of them got even four of the 16 votes.

“Welcome to Judgement Day, not just of a moment but of an era,” Sports Illustrated baseball writer Tom Verducci wrote at the time. “… PEDs won the era but lost in that room, sending a signal to Bonds, Clemens and the like.” That message: “Forget it, you’re not getting into the Hall of Fame for the foreseeable future.”

The Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee, which considers former baseball players whose major contributions have taken place since 1980 and who have used up their BBWAA eligibility, will meet again in December, but with a different membership. The Hall of Fame board of directors will appoint the new members for the tally.

The players on this year’s ballot have not yet been announced, but even if Clemens is on it, he’s not likely to get the 12 of 16 votes needed — even with an assist from Trump, BBWAA President Bob Nightengale argued.

“Someone needs to tell Donald Trump that neither MLB or the Baseball Writers’ Association of America have any say in Roger Clemens’ Hall of Fame candidacy at this point,” Nightengale wrote in a recent USA Today column. Given Clemens’s paltry showing last time, Nightengale reasoned, he’s not going to win passage — “no matter how often he plays golf with Trump.”

And that’s coming from someone who agrees with Trump that Clemens belongs in the Hall — having voted for him all 10 times he was on the baseball writers ballot.

In a 2018 column, Nightengale advocated both Clemens and Bonds.

“It’s absurd that two of the greatest players in the history of the game are not in the Hall of Fame,” Nightengale wrote.

When Clemens first got on the HOF ballot in 2013, Nightengale’s position was in the minority — the pitcher got just 37.6% of the vote. But that figure rose steadily over the next 10 years, peaking at 65.2% in 2022, his last year of BBWWA eligibility.

Sharing the love

Following that vote, Clemens tweeted, “Hey y’all! I figured I’d give y’all a statement since it’s that time of the year again. My family and I put the HOF in the rear view mirror ten years ago. I didn’t play baseball to get into the HOF. I played to make a generational difference in the lives of my family.” He thanked those writers who voted for him, and added, “Hopefully everyone can now close this book and keep their eyes forward focusing on what is really important in life. All love!”

Now, however, Clemens is showing that love to Trump. On his X page, the pitcher shared Trump’s Truth Social post along with a note of appreciation: “I appreciate the love! DT knows more than anyone the fake news that’s out there. Everyone has their agendas… I played the game to change my family’s direction generationally and to WIN!”

Clemens was already a fan of the president’s before the recent support. After last year’s presidential election, for example, Clemens taunted on X, “Who ever said ‘I’m leaving America if Trump wins’ … don’t let the door hit you in the a** on the  way out.” Alongside it was an American flag emoji.

And following the first assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024, Clemens posted the iconic photo of Trump raising his fist in the air in defiance.

“Speechless right now. Could not be more mad,” Clemens wrote above it. “I stand for this man. This picture says it all. The angry American is here and yall aren’t ready for it.”

A failed prosecution

Clemens retired from baseball after the 2007 season with a track record that, by objective standards, would have made him a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. In his 24-year career with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, and Houston Astros, Clemens won a record seven Cy Young Awards, amassed 354 victories, and finished third in career strikeouts, not second, as Trump wrote in his post, with 4,672, behind Ryan and Randy Johnson.

But in December 2007, just two months after Clemens’s final appearance, former Sen. George Mitchell issued his famous report for MLB on PEDs, naming Clemens, among many other players, as having used steroids and human growth hormone.

The next year, at a contentious nationally televised congressional hearing on PEDs in baseball, Clemens testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he never used steroids or HGH. Soon after, the leaders of that committee made a referral to the Justice Department to look into whether the pitcher had made false statements to Congress. In 2010, a federal grand jury indicted Clemens on two counts of perjury, three counts of making false statements, and one count of obstructing Congress for his testimony in front of Congress and in a deposition.

The case against Clemens was part of an era when government authorities zealously pursued cheating in sports, including prosecuting Bonds and suing cyclist Lance Armstrong.

But the Rocket’s trial was a trainwreck from the start.

The federal judge overseeing it, Reggie Walton, declared a mistrial in summer 2011, when prosecutors showed jurors a part of the videotaped congressional testimony he had ruled inadmissible. “Mr. Clemens has to get a fair trial,” Walton said. “In my view, he can’t get it now.”

When a new trial finally began the following year, dozens of reporters descended on the U.S. courthouse near Capitol Hill to cover it. But this was no made-for-TV law drama.

Instead, the pace was so agonizingly slow that Walton tossed two jurors for sleeping and scolded both prosecutors and defense attorneys for dragging out the proceedings, blaming them for making it too “boring” for “fed-up jurors.”

In that sense, the trial was almost a reflection of baseball of that era, before the advent of the pitch clock: plodding, bereft of action, and seemingly interminable. Originally slated to last four to six weeks, it dragged on for a full nine.

The jury deliberated for less than 10 hours before acquitting Clemens on all charges.

But that didn’t appear to move the needle for Clemens’s HOF chances. Just a few months later, baseball writers resoundingly rejected him in his first year of eligibility. The BBWAA’s president at the time, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle, revealed that she voted no on Clemens, Bonds, and Sammy Sosa, another player who faced PED allegations. “The evidence for steroid use is too strong,” she said.

Trump: I’d sue

The president, obviously, disagrees, and might feel emboldened after he urged MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to let Pete Rose, the sport’s all-time hits leader, into the Hall of Fame. Manfred said Trump’s support was a factor in his decision to remove Rose and other deceased players from baseball’s permanently ineligible list. That makes Rose, who bet on baseball games as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, eligible for the Hall, although induction is by no means assured. The president referenced that in his Clemens post.

“This is going to be like Pete Rose where, after over 4,000 Hits, they wouldn’t put him in the Hall of Fame until I spoke to the Commissioner, and he promised to do so, but it was essentially a promise not kept because he only ‘opened it up’ when Pete died and, even then, he said that Pete Rose only got into the mix because of DEATH,” Trump wrote. “We are not going to let that happen in the case of Roger Clemens.  354 Wins — Put him in NOW. He and his great family should not be forced to endure this ‘stupidity’ any longer!”

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In a second post on Aug. 31, Trump offered Clemens some free legal advice.

“Frankly, I think he has a major lawsuit against Baseball,” the president wrote. “If it were me, I’d sue them.”

Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports and politics historian, has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, History.com, and other national publications. He is the author of several books, including You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals.