Peyton Manning HGH Allegations: QB Sent ‘Men In Black’ To Pressure Family Of Key Witness, Report Says
Peyton Manning, the future Hall of Fame Denver Broncos quarterback, hired two mysterious “men in black” to intimidate a witness who had made allegations that the banned steroid HGH was shipped to Manning’s home, according to a new Washington Post report. Instead, the two goons, who identified themselves as private investigators, showed up at the home of the man’s parents.
The parents of witness Charlie Sly were so alarmed by the two men that they placed a 911 emergency call to police in Brownsburg, Indiana, according to the shocking new report.
Sly quickly recanted his allegations that the wife of Peyton Manning, Ashley Manning, had received shipments of HGH, or Human Growth Hormone.
Also in the Washington Post story, the Manning family spokesperson — former presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer — admitted that some type of drug or medicine was indeed shipped to Manning’s home. Peyton Manning initially dismissed the allegations as “garbage.” Fleischer refused to specify whether the shipments indeed contained HGH.
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The two men showed up at the home of Sly’s parents on December 22. The HGH allegations against Peyton Manning became public December 27 when the Al Jazeera America network aired its documentary The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers. The documentary included explosive, hidden camera footage in which Charlie Sly — who said he was an employee of The Guyer Institute anti-aging clinic — boasted of supplying various professional athletes including Manning with HGH.
Three days before the documentary aired, and two days after the two men made their initial visit to his parents’ home, Sly recanted his statements shown in the documentary in a statement recorded on a smartphone camera.
Watch the Al-Jazeera documentary The Dark Side in the video below.
Manning would have known as early as December 4 that he would be named as having received HGH shipments in his wife’s name in the documentary, because on that date Al-Jazeera reportedly sent an email to everyone identified in the documentary.
Manning quickly hired a prominent law firm to defend him, as well as former George W. Bush White House press secretary Fleischer to wage a public relations campaign on his behalf.
Bauer and Ford eventually admitted that they were not cops but private investigators, and were looking for Charlie Sly; but, when asked who they worked for, the two “men in black” clammed up, refusing to name their employer, except to say that they had been hired by “a party interested in the al-Jazeera documentary.”
A lawyer working for Peyton Manning also visited the Guyer Institute, where he combed through the medical records of both Peyton and Ashley Manning.
Fleischer told The Washington Post that the lawyer did not remove any of those documents. He also denied that the two private eyes intimidated or influenced Sly or his parents, and that Sly recorded his recantation of his own accord the day after Bauer and Ford made a second visit to Sly’s parents where they spoke directly with Charles Sly.
I hate Peyton Manning. Why doesn’t everybody else? https://t.co/itggeOZIOr pic.twitter.com/5UqrSJQ94r
— Slate (@Slate) February 5, 2016
The National Football League has said that it will conduct an investigation into the HGH allegations against Peyton Manning, who is scheduled to be the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, February 7, in Santa Clara, California.
Whether the NFL has yet accessed the medical records of Peyton and Ashley Manning at The Guyer Institute is not clear.
The alleged shipments of HGH to Ashley Manning occurred in 2011, when Peyton Manning was recovering from a neck injury that caused him to miss an entire NFL season. Manning this week repeated his charge that the allegations were “garbage.”
[Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]
