Unsurprisingly, Broncos QB Peyton Manning has dismissed charges stemming from an Al Jazeera report linking him to human growth hormone allegedly procured by his wife in 2011. As the Denver Post’s Troy E. Renck and Nicki Jhabvala report, Manning has the (paid) support of someone very accustomed to defending the indefensible :
Ari Fleischer, who heads a sports communications company and is an adviser to Manning, slammed the accusations in an interview with The Denver Post on Saturday night, calling the report “junk journalism.”
“There’s no truth to it,” Fleischer said. “What they have is a well-known con man from England who secretly recorded a former intern.”
Charles Sly was an unpaid intern at The Guyer Institute from February 2013-May 2013, according to Fleischer. This disputes information in the documentary, which says Sly worked at the institute in 2011. Sly confirmed Fleischer’s account, telling ESPN on Saturday that he worked at the institute in 2013, not in 2011 as the Al Jazeera report alleges.
According to Fleischer, Manning was a patient of The Guyer Institute in the fall of 2011 for rehabilitation from neck surgeries. Manning has not been a patient since, Fleischer said.