Lance Armstrong is facing a federal fraud case on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Service paid $30 million to Armstrong and his team, but now claim it wouldn't have spent the money had it known of his use of performance-enhancing drugs from 1997 to 2004.
Anna Hansen, the seven-time Tour de France winner's girlfriend since 2008, was subpoenaed by the federal government to provide information about Armstrong's hit-and-run in December of 2014 and a 2011 confrontation with former teammate Tyler Hamilton.
Naturally, Armstrong's lawyers took to the offensive.
"The first topic is a car accident that occurred in 2014, a decade after the U.S. Postal Service sponsorship ended," Armstrong's attorneys argued (via Aspen Times). "The accident-which had nothing to do with the Postal Service, performance enhancing substances, or cycling-lies well beyond the hinterlands of anything relevant to this case."
Given the public nature of Armstrong's confession, his attorney's argued the relevance of Hansen's' involvement in the case.
"The government claims to need that evidence to prove Armstrong's use of performance enhancing substances, concealment of that use, or the knowledge of others about that use," they wrote in a filing. "But Armstrong has admitted his use and concealment to the entire world on national television and in binding admissions in his answers."
"Armstrong does not dispute that he concealed his use of performance enhancing substances until January 2013," they added. "However, the details of the 2011 encounter with Hamilton add nothing, other than tabloid fodder, to the legitimate evidentiary record on that issue."
"None of this, or Hansen's recollection of it, has the slightest thing to do with alleged false claims to USPS between 1997-2004."
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