US News

Feds eye reopening Armstrong ’roid case

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Tour de France cheater Lance Armstrong may have pedaled his way onto a mountain of trouble with this week’s doping admission, because federal officials are considering reopening a criminal probe into his shady steroid activities, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

Feds in Los Angeles are talking about renewing an investigation into drug trafficking, fraud and other dirty dealings by Armstrong, which had been mysteriously dropped in 2012 after two years of investigation.

The new interest in the case came after the disgraced ex-cycling star confessed Monday, during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, to taking performance-enhancing drugs.

“If you’ve worked on the case a long time, certainly it’s fair that you might want to go back in after he admits it,” said a federal law-enforcement source. “You’d have to go in and look at” the confession and the case as it stood when it was closed.

“Just because you admit something to Oprah Winfrey doesn’t mean it’s a full-blown confession, but it’s something that’s worth examining.”

The interview is set to air in two parts tomorrow and Friday at 9 p.m. on Winfrey’s OWN network.

After years of brazenly denying he doped, a backpedaling Armstrong held nothing back in his interview, Winfrey said yesterday on “CBS This Morning.”

“Because he was so forthcoming, I went in prepared having to dig and pull and to reference,” said Winfrey of Armstrong, who defiantly denied for years that he used drugs to win his seven Tour de France titles.

“I didn’t have to do that,” she said, though she added that “he didn’t come clean in the manner I expected.”

“We were mesmerized and riveted by some of his answers,” Winfrey said. “But I feel he answered questions in a way that he was ready. I didn’t get all the questions asked. But I think the most important questions, and the answers that people around the world have been waiting to hear, were answered.

“I was satisfied by the answers,” she said of the mea culpa.

The liar was stripped of his Tour de France titles and banned for life from competition after the US Anti-Doping Agency released a report saying his US Postal Service team was part of a sophisticated doping ring.

CBS News reported Armstrong offered to pay the US government $5 million for his alleged fraud to the Postal Service by doping, and also offered to be a cooperating witness in a federal doping probe. But the Justice Department rejected the offers as not enough, CBS reported.

ABC reported the federal government likely will join a whistleblower lawsuit against Armstrong, first filed by his ex-teammate Floyd Landis

Critics questioned why Armstrong was confessing first to Oprah — and not to authorities.

“While WADA encourages all athletes to come clean about any doping activities they have been involved with or know about, these details must be passed on to the relevant anti-doping authorities,” said World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman.

“Only when Mr. Armstrong makes a full confession under oath — and tells the anti-doping authorities all he knows about doping activities — can any legal and proper process for him to seek any reopening or reconsideration of his lifetime ban commence.”

Additional reporting by Josh Saul in Austin, Texas and David K. Li