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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: BayGBM on September 04, 2014, 12:25:15 PM
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McDonnell guilty of 11 corruption charges
By Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind S. Helderman
RICHMOND — A federal jury Thursday found former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, guilty of public corruption — sending a message that they believed the couple sold the office once occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to a free spending Richmond businessman for GOLF OUTINGS, lavish vacations and $120,000 in sweetheart LOANS.
After three days of deliberations, the seven men and five women who heard weeks of gripping testimony about the McDonnells’ alleged misdeeds acquitted the couple of several charges pending against them--but nevertheless found that they lent the prestige of the governor’s office to Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in a nefarious exchange for his largesse.
The verdict means that Robert McDonnell, who was already the first governor in Virginia history to be charged with a crime, now he holds an even more unwanted distinction: the first ever to be convicted of one. He and his wife face decades in federal prison, though their actual sentence will probably fall well short of that.
The former governor was convicted of 11 corruption-related counts pending against him, though acquitted of lying of LOAN documents. The former first lady was convicted of eight corruption-related charges, along with obstruction of justice. Maureen McDonnell was acquitted of lying on a loan document.
The jury’s verdict brings to a close a trial that seemed to grip the nation since it began in July with the shocking revelation by DEFENSE ATTORNEYS that the McDonnells’ marriage was shattered, and that would be a core element of their attempt to beat the charges. The proceedings that followed over the next five weeks at times resembled a soap opera, as the McDonnells endured a humiliating dissection of their relationship amid unflattering allegations about the lavish lifestyle supplied by businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.paid for them to lead.
Jurors heard from 67 witnesses, including Williams and the former governor himself, who took the stand in his own defense for nearly 24 hours over several days. They saw memorable photos of McDonnell flashing a Rolex watch and riding in a Ferrari, and they heard sometimes tearful testimony from the governor’s own children and former staffers. They were shown MORTGAGE applications, phone records, more charts than they probably care to remember — all designed to convince them that the governor and his wife conspired to take bribes from Williams, or that they did not.
The case had more nuanced, legal questions, too: namely, did the governor and his wife perform or promise to perform so-called “official acts” for Williams in exchange for $177,000 in gifts and LOANS? Prosecutors argued they did. Those acts, they said, came in the form of meetings that McDonnell arranged for Williams with state officials, a luncheon Williams was allowed to throw at the governor’s mansion to help launch a product he was trying to sell, and a guest list Williams was allowed to shape at another mansion reception meant for healthcare leaders.
DEFENSE ATTORNEYS argued otherwise, saying there was no evidence the governor even knew what Williams wanted. And what he did want — state funded studies of his product, Anatabloc — he never got, defense attorneys stressed.
Prosecutors put on a compelling case, showing jurors several instances in which gifts and LOANS were provided in close proximity to the McDonnells’ efforts to assist Williams and his company. But defense attorneys noted, accurately, that even Williams himself did not describe an explicit, corrupt bargain he had with the governor. And they noted that Williams was testifying with generous immunity agreements, which they said motivated him to lie about his relationship with the McDonnells.
The investigation into the couple’s relationship with Williams consumed much of McDonnell’s last year in office. It halted what had been steady rise through the ranks of Republican politics for the former ATTORNEY GENERAL that had once seemed likely to culminate in a run for president in 2016.
The former first couple were indicted in January, 10 days after McDonnell concluded his four year term in office.
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The idiot should have made a deal
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Good. Lock his dumb @@@ up. People who engage in public corruption should spend time in prison.
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On the plus side now they will have plenty of time to read for their bibles
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On the plus side now they will have plenty of time to read for their bibles
or in Obama's case, his Koran.
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or in Obama's case, his Koran.
LOL - I thought he was a secret atheist
How does it feel knowing your tax dollars will pay him a very nice pension for the rest of his life (and of course free security for life too) while you're stuck teaching high school kids how to flip tractor tires in an alley behind a storage locker
Hey, how much did you have to raise the cost of those lessons due to Obama's last vacation?
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LOL - I thought he was a secret atheist
How does it feel knowing your tax dollars will pay him a very nice pension for the rest of his life (and of course free security for life too) while you're stuck teaching high school kids how to flip tractor tires in an alley behind a storage locker
Hey, how much did you have to raise the cost of those lessons due to Obama's last vacation?
Hey twinkle toes - rather than the non-existent working out you do - flipping a tire or two would do you well so you were not as frail and sickly
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Hey twinkle toes - rather than the non-existent working out you do - flipping a tire or two would do you well so you were not as frail and sickly
Hey Nancy, save your gay fantasies for your boyfriend.
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Good. Lock his dumb @@@ up. People who engage in public corruption should spend time in prison.
+100
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On the plus side now they will have plenty of time to read for their bibles
Now that`s how to see the glass half full.
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LOL - I thought he was a secret atheist
How does it feel knowing your tax dollars will pay him a very nice pension for the rest of his life (and of course free security for life too) while you're stuck teaching high school kids how to flip tractor tires in an alley behind a storage locker
Hey, how much did you have to raise the cost of those lessons due to Obama's last vacation?
How does it feel knowing you voted for a terrorist sympathizer twice. Pretty fucking stupid I would imagine. But then again you didn't know any better.
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How does it feel knowing you voted for a terrorist sympathizer twice. Pretty fucking stupid I would imagine. But then again you didn't know any better.
I have no control over what you imagine
you know this
right?
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Maureen McDonnell: Newly convicted and utterly silent
By Petula Dvorak
Maureen McDonnell, having uttered not a single word in court for five weeks, stepped into a car and rode away from the crowd a newly convicted felon, still silent.
Her husband, who made history as the first Virginia governor to stand trial and to be convicted, stopped to thank the news media after the verdict Thursday afternoon. Still working the crowd, that guy.
After 24 hours on the witness stand and one of the biggest public displays of wife-shaming in memory, former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) didn’t save himself. Or his wife.
He had the chance last year to man up and spare his wife and family all this. Prosecutors offered him a single count of fraud that avoided all mention of corruption and any charges against his wife.
But McDonnell decided to gamble. And everyone lost.
The McDonnell family members sobbed after the jury’s guilty verdicts were read in a Richmond courthouse. But the tears should have started much earlier, because whether or not the jury decided that Bob and Maureen McDonnell were guilty of public corruption, the couple had already trashed respect, honor and decency for themselves, their family and the people of Virginia.
The biggest roadkill in all this is Maureen McDonnell. Jurors were treated to a parade of TMI witnesses who called the former first lady a “nutbag,” who talked about her fits, her frustrations and her private meltdowns and even raised the possibility that she suffered from a mental illness.
And still, she was silent.
This woman took the role of long-suffering political wife to a new level. She was flayed, demeaned, belittled and besmirched in court. And she didn’t say a word.
This trial was an unmasking of an uncaring husband and the ruthlessness with which he pursued power — even at the expense of his spouse and children. The lessons here aren’t so much about a shopping spree the former first lady went on with wealthy operator Jonnie R. Williams or the event she helped orchestrate for him to plug the vitamin product he claims to have squeezed out of tobacco leaves.
Let’s be honest, the value of the luxury gifts and loans involved in the case, $177,000, is pretty petty. The McDonnells took these from a Virginia businessman. They let him pay for part of their daughter’s wedding. In exchange, they tried to help him promote his product.
But what this trial told us is that Virginians, embodied in the seven men and five women of the jury, value integrity.
All that the McDonnells said they appreciated when they ran for office — family values, honesty, transparency and that integrity — was lost not just in their transactions with Williams, but, more important, in the way they acted in that courtroom.
Bob and Maureen McDonnell didn’t really address the corruption charges, the possibility of a corrupt quid pro quo during their trial. Rather, they practically mocked the legal system by asking jurors to listen to kvetching and whining about the state of their marriage.
Or at least he did. We still don’t know what she would say.
Maureen McDonnell came and went into the courtroom apart from her husband, keeping quiet, talking only occasionally to her attorneys.
The jury was treated to a cockamamie, Dr. Phil legal strategy of making Maureen, a wife and mother of five, the problem.
We are so used to hearing powerful men on the witness stand say, “I didn’t do it.” But this was one of the first times — and an especially low point in American history — that we saw such a man try to shift all the blame to his wife.
Bob McDonnell whined about the slights, huffs, insecurities and private frustrations that any couple of 38 years would have.
He complained that his wife wasn’t as happy as he was when he won elections. She was insecure and tense about his relentless march forward into public life.
All of that was supposed to make it okay for him to take money from a man who was clearly trying to win him over and get special favors.
I watched those jurors when prosecutors displayed an exhibit of a bill from a fancy golf resort, where greens fees for a day can run more than $2,000. That sort of living surely doesn’t sit well with most working Americans.
But it was the evisceration of his wife — no matter how unpalatable her personality may be — that made us squirm the most.
The jury found McDonnell guilty of 11 counts of and his wife guilty of nine. There’s a pretty good chance they are going to prison. An awful spectacle followed by an awful outcome for a man who once aspired to the White House.
No wonder he had his face in his hands, shaking and sobbing. He’d thrown the mother of his children under the bus, and it hadn’t gained him — or her — anything but humiliation and shame.
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Can Robert and Maureen McDonnell’s marriage be saved?
By Melinda Henneberger
The most confounding question for most people following the corruption trial of Robert F. and Maureen McDonnell was not the legality of the former Virginia governor and his wife soliciting all manner of loot from a vitamin salesman looking for help launching a tobacco-based potential cure-all.
It wasn’t, as Bob McDonnell himself asked rhetorically on the stand, why he’d trade all the respect built up over years of public service for some swag from former Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams. Or even why, if his wife, Maureen, was really the selfish, screaming terror he and her own defense team made her out to be, she was willing to shoulder the blame for them both.
Instead, the mystery was why the former GOP star and his wife ever agreed to put the allegedly sad state of their marriage at the heart of their legal defense — a strategy that failed miserably with the seven men and five women on the jury even as it made their private difficulties into a public spectacle.
Now that the McDonnells have been found guilty on multiple counts and are probably facing jail time, the future of their relationship would seem to be the least of their problems. But after the five-week public vivisection of the former first lady, it’s hard to see how their 38-year marriage can survive.
“I’d be surprised if they ever talk again,” said veteran Texas defense attorney Frank Jackson, an old friend of Bob McDonnell’s attorney Hank Asbill and someone who has seen lots of couples survive all kinds of legal scandals — when, that is, one mate either believes that the other is flat-out innocent or has been wronged by his accusers.
Of the McDonnells, though, Jackson says that from what he’s seen, “Those people will never be back together.”
Many political couples do get past marital betrayals that become public, though the majority of them revolve around infidelity. Bill and Hillary Clinton are as married as they ever were. So are Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), whose number was found on the client list of the “D.C. Madam,” and his wife, Wendy, a former prosecutor. A quarter of a century after former senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.) ended (then restarted, then re-ended) his 1988 presidential run after photographic evidence of an island getaway with a young model named Donna Rice, he and Lee Hart, the woman he married in 1958, remain together. Huma Abedin didn’t leave former representative Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) over his sexting lapse — and relapse — either.
When Jenny Sanford did divorce then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), as she explained in her book, “Staying True,” it was because she couldn’t stay with him and feel proud of that choice. That, and after he cried for the soulmate/mistress who is now his fiancée at the endless news conference at which he admitted that he hadn’t been hiking the Appalachian Trail, he actually called home to ask her how he’d done. (He’s since been elected to Congress — the voters apparently being more forgiving of his transgressions than his former wife.)
One of the most spectacularly wronged political wives in memory, the late Elizabeth Edwards, whose husband fathered a child with another woman while she was fighting terminal cancer, once said that life after her separation from former presidential aspirant and senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) involved “the ongoing process of finding your feet again and retelling your story to yourself. You thought you were living in one novel, and it turns out you were living in another.”
In his novel on the topic, “Adultery,” the Brazilian writer Paolo Coelho argues that ending a marriage over an affair is almost always a mistake. “You see politicians destroying their careers because of infidelity — there are many cases all over the world,’’ he told WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi. But breaking up over such a thing is something else again, he said, adding that he’s certainly glad he hadn’t thrown away his marriage of now 34 years after his own and his wife’s long-ago infidelities. When she confessed, he said, “I thought, ‘So what? I love her.’ I did not feel very well knowing this, but I’m glad we survived it.”
Some spouses stick around because they believe their mates have done nothing wrong: “When you think your husband is an innocent victim, that makes all the difference in the world,’’ said Patti Blagojevich, whose husband, Rod, the former governor of Illinois, is serving a 14-year term in a federal prison in Colorado after being found guilty of trying to sell the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama.
“If I thought he was [guilty], that would degrade my respect for him, but how could you leave someone who’s there through no fault of his own?” All summer, she said, their family has been waiting for the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on his legal team’s argument that nothing he did was illegal.
“I just heard from a woman the other day,’’ Blagojevich added, “whose husband is going to the same prison, and she’s really contemplating divorce. But he wasn’t the person she thought he was. So then, why would you stay?”
That, too, has been done, of course.
But politicians are not like the rest of us; mortifications that would send the non-pol into hiding are sloughed off as all part of the job.
Thus did McDonnell reject his chance to plead guilty to a single count of fraud — a deal that would have allowed him to shield his wife from charges and avoid a trial. Instead, he opted for five weeks of excruciatingly intimate testimony about their apparently fizzled union. And on that, at least, his wife agreed.
Their defense revolved around her supposed “crush” on Williams. The couple’s attorneys argued that the mother of the governor’s five children could not have been working with her husband to trade official favors for goodies because she had a “mild obsession,” whatever that means, with her “favorite playmate,” who showered her with gifts and attention.
That argument never made much sense. Throughout recorded history, distracted or even estranged mates have been known to communicate. Still, every day, the McDonnells made quite a show of not only arriving and leaving the courthouse separately, but mostly avoiding eye contact even while seated at adjacent defense tables just feet apart.
In 17 hours of testimony, the former governor, who told the jury he has been staying with his parish priest since shortly before the trial began, ticked off a long list of complaints about his wife, including her decibel-level communication style and unwillingness to seek counseling and his hurt that she couldn’t get along with her staff. He testified that their marriage was “basically on hold.”
For decades, their eldest daughter testified, she had considered her mother lonely and depressed. And well before the investigation, any show of warmth between the two was, according to Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky, an “act.”
“Any time they went into a public setting,’’ she testified, “ it was like a switch flipped and they turned it on.”
If being shut out by her husband was hard for Maureen McDonnell, hearing her child describe her impressions of her escape into drinks, long baths and soap operas had to have been torture.
Often, because politics really is a family business, the campaign spouse is more likely to see his or her career as a joint venture in a way that a doctor’s wife or lawyer’s husband probably wouldn’t.
That’s why it was Elizabeth Edwards who insisted her husband continue campaigning for the presidency even after his affair became public. And why Lee Hart reportedly said, back in ’87, “We can keep going. I think it’s important you become president.”
Maureen McDonnell, on the other hand, hated the political life that, by all accounts, she never wanted. But no matter what he says, she did not end his career — and perhaps their marriage — by herself.
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Thus did McDonnell reject his chance to plead guilty to a single count of fraud — a deal that would have allowed him to shield his wife from charges and avoid a trial. Instead, he opted for five weeks of excruciatingly intimate testimony about their apparently fizzled union. And on that, at least, his wife agreed.
What a dirtbag.
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yup, Mr. Family Values, Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson loving 'christian' had a chance to save his wife by taking a plea deal.
instead, through the wifey under the proverbial bus and acted like they weren't really together.
have fun in prison; and don't drop the soap, pretty boi
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What a dirtbag.
yup
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Time to give back the Rolexes and the Oscar de la Renta gowns.
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Time to give back the Rolexes and the Oscar de la Renta gowns.
She already gave back the gowns (and tried to pretend that they were merely loaned to her). It was for this reason she was found guilty of obstruction of justice.
How does a woman "borrow" expensive gowns from a man who buys them brand new specifically for her? That makes about as much sense as Bob claiming that he thought the Rolex he kept posing for photos with was a fake (as he did in court). Who poses with a watch he thinks is fake? ::)
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She already gave back the gowns (and tried to pretend that they were merely loaned to her). It was for this reason she was found guilty of obstruction of justice.
How does a woman "borrow" expensive gowns from a man who buys them brand new specifically for her? That makes about as much sense as Bob claiming that he thought the Rolex he kept posing for photos with was a fake (as he did in court). Who poses with a watch he thinks is fake? ::)
People that think everyone else is dumber than they are.... oh wait...
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When questioned by the press Bob's spokesman claimed that there was no recreational use of the Ferrari; when questioned by prosecutors, Bob claimed he did not know how or when the Ferrari arrived at the vacation house he was using (for free)... And that he only drove the Ferrari as a favor to the car's owner. ::)
http://auto.ferrari.com/en_US/sports-cars-models/
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The pathetic and predictable end for Bob McDonnell
By Chris Cillizza
In March 2012, I ranked the 10 most likely Republican vice presidential picks for GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Bob McDonnell ranked second on that list. Today -- roughly two and a half years later -- the former Virginia governor was found guilty on 11 charges of public corruption tied to his and his wife's relationship with a donor named Jonnie R. Williams Sr.
While it's always dangerous to call anything in politics "the largest and most rapid collapse in modern memory", the fall from political grace for McDonnell is absolutely stunning -- and ensures his spot in the ignominious annals of disgraced politicians with national ambitions right alongside John Edwards.
What's even more remarkable for me than McDonnell's collapse, however, is the combination of stupidity, avarice and total political blindness that led him to this day.
McDonnell had long been touted to me by Republicans in the know as a rising star. He was socially conservative but not in a way that scared establishment Republicans or independents. He was a gifted communicator who knew how to stay on message. And, most importantly, he had the "it" factor -- a combination of charisma and common touch that made people take notice. That talk grew when McDonnell was elected state Attorney General in 2005 and soared when he crushed state Sen. Creigh Deeds -- riding a "Bob's for Jobs" slogan -- to become the Commonwealth's governor in 2009. And for much of his term, McDonnell's approval numbers seemed to defy the gravity that was dragging down other rising star politicians around the country. (Think Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio circa 2011/2012.)
That reputation -- and his demonstrated record of political and policy success -- was what made Roz Helderman's initial reporting about the McDonnells' relationship with Williams all the more stunning. The couple had accepted shopping sprees, elaborate wedding gifts, stays in fancy vacation houses, rides in expensive cars, straight cash and watches -- among many, many other things. The list of what the McDonnells took from Williams really has to be seen to be believed. So here it is (gifts graphic):
There is simply no way that any politician who was as allegedly able and ambitious as McDonnell would not understand that the relationship between his family and Williams was deeply inappropriate. It's inconceivable. And yet, that was the case that the McDonnells sought to make in the weeks-long trial that saw almost seven dozen witnesses called. McDonnell, his lawyers argued, was simply doing for Williams what he would do for any Virginia businessman hoping to get attention for a product. (Williams was pushing a dietary supplement called Anatabloc.) That eye-rollingly-difficult-to-believe justification for the parade of gifts showered on the McDonnells was made even less believable by a number of former aides to the governor and First Lady who said they had repeatedly warned the two of the impropriety of their relationship with Williams.
The extent of that relationship -- as detailed first by Helderman and then by the prosecutors - was such that there seemed very little doubt that after three days of deliberation the jury would return a guilty verdict on at least some of the 14 counts. That the jury convicted McDonnell of all 11 counts of public corruption speaks to the conclusiveness of the evidence presented against him and the tremendous folly of his actions.
In the end -- and this is the end although McDonnell has yet to be sentenced -- I am left with a feeling of amazement at the vast gap between how McDonnell was regarded (including by me) as recently as two years ago and who he turned out to be. His judgment, which was touted as one of his best attributes, wound up being one of his worst.
McDonnell's political career has long been over; the jury's decision simply cemented that fact (and then put another two layers of cement on that cement.) But, the professional and personal decline confirmed by a jury of his peers on Thursday remains stunning in its depth and, frankly, dumbness.
Politicians: They're just like us -- for better and, in this case, worse.
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When questioned by the press Bob's spokesman claimed that there was no recreational use of the Ferrari; when questioned by prosecutors, Bob claimed he did not know how or when the Ferrari arrived at the vacation house he was using (for free)... And that he only drove the Ferrari as a favor to the car's owner. ::)
http://auto.ferrari.com/en_US/sports-cars-models/
Dumb ass schmuck. Next we will find out he has a mistress and he will claim the affair was all fake and he was just fucking her as a favor to her husband.
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Day 21 in court
A briefing book on free vacations
At day’s end, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry presented a last, unflattering piece of evidence for the former governor.
His staff seems to have compiled materials on where he could stay for free — and golf for free — on vacation.
Dry began by asking the governor if his staff “put together briefing books of places that you and your family could play golf for free?” Robert F. McDonnell responded that he did not remember, although he knew donors sometimes made offers, and it was possible his staff kept a list.
Dry then showed the governor two January 2013 e-mails between two aides. The e-mails show Emily Rabbitt, a deputy scheduler who later became McDonnell’s travel aide, asking Adam Zubowsky, a travel aide who ultimately married one of the governor’s daughters, about how to go about planning golf for McDonnell while he is on vacation. Zubowsky responds that Rabbitt should find people they know who own golf courses “and will let me and my family play for free, or at a reduced cost. Also finding out where to stay for free/ at a reduced cost.”
McDonnell testified that he never instructed staff to prepare such materials. The evidence is nonetheless damaging, presenting him as seeking handouts in dealings outside of those with Jonnie R. Williams Sr.
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What a dirtbag.
No shit. Dude could've done a few years, wrote a book, and came out. Now him and his wife will spend the rest of their useful years in prison.
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Bob McDonnell’s self-delusion and arrogance led to downfall in corruption trial
By Robert McCartney
When Bob McDonnell broke down in tears in the courtroom as the 20 “guilty” verdicts were announced, what do you suppose he was thinking?
That his career lay in ruins? That the jury disbelieved his nearly 24 hours of sworn testimony? That his failed defense strategy had demolished the reputation of his wife, Maureen?
We won’t know until the former governor writes a tell-all book or pleads for redemption in an emotional television interview.
Here’s what I’d like to believe: Bob McDonnell’s sobs showed he finally recognized that his own arrogance and self-delusion had brought him down.
McDonnell thought he was so clever that he could exploit loopholes in Virginia law to pocket $177,000 in luxury gifts and sweetheart loans without getting caught.
When that didn’t work, and corruption charges were brought, he thought he could talk his way out of trouble on the witness stand.
He was fooling himself. Neither the law’s gray areas nor his own eloquence swayed the jurors. They needed just over two days to convict him of 11 felonies and Maureen of nine.
“His happy life is over, whether or not he is exonerated on appeal,” Anne Coughlin, a University of Virginia criminal law professor, said. “A jury of his peers came back and said, ‘You are corrupt.’ That must really conflict with his image of who he is.”
I’d also like to believe that other politicians will learn from McDonnell’s downfall.
The jury’s quick and devastating verdict showed that the public doesn’t care much about legal nuances, such as what constitutes an “official act.”
The public just thinks, reasonably enough, that elected officials should not accept lavish personal gifts from people who want something in return.
“If you’re a smart governor or state politician of any stripe, you are going to be very wary about accepting any personal gift of any size from anyone,” said Andrew G. McBride, a former federal prosecutor who now practices at Wiley Rein.
Excessive pride wasn’t Bob McDonnell’s only sin. Greed played a role. He also might have suffered from envy of the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by the wealthy business executives who suddenly wanted to hang out with him after he moved into the Executive Mansion in Richmond.
But McDonnell ended up this way mainly because of hubris. His story is very much a morality tale, but not the one he’d constructed in his own mind or successfully peddled to the public.
In more than two decades in elected office, McDonnell portrayed himself as the straightest of straight arrows. Former Army lieutenant colonel. Loving husband and father of five. Christian-values conservative.
He convinced himself of his own selflessness. In a revealing sentence in the famous e-mail to Maureen begging to improve their marriage, he wrote, “My whole life is spent trying to help my family and other people.”
The scandal pointed to a contrary character trait: self-centeredness. That defect was evident in three major missteps by McDonnell that resulted in Thursday’s conviction.
The first was convincing himself that he was such an expert in Virginia law that he could go just up to the line without overstepping. He overlooked the risk of accepting so much largesse from businessman Jonnie Williams Sr.
“You have to look at the whole picture,” said Randall Eliason, a former chief of public corruption in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District. “What emerged here was a long-term pattern of extraordinary gifts.”
In his second error, McDonnell was so determined to win complete exoneration for himself that he turned down a plea deal that he clearly should have taken. It would have required him to plead guilty to just one crime, which wasn’t corruption, and let his wife go unpunished.
Finally, he mounted the notorious “broken marriage” defense, which proved too concocted to be credible. He tried to clear both himself and Maureen by claiming, in effect, that she was responsible for all of it — and she couldn’t be convicted of public corruption because the first lady’s position is merely ceremonial.
It didn’t sit well with jurors, partly because they noticed that the couple had physically separated only a week before the trial.
“Pointing and blaming other people is risky, especially when you’re the governor and the other person you’re blaming is your wife,” Coughlin said.
As he left the courthouse, McDonnell commented that his “trust remains in the Lord.” As a man of faith, he ought to turn now to one of the most important spiritual virtues: humility.
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I would like to hear his kids interviewed. Presumably they still love their parents and believe in their innocence, but all of them were on the Williams gravy train. When they were receiving all the gifts and cash didn't they think there was a connection between getting all that stuff from a total stranger and the fact that their father was governor? Weren't they smart enough, then or now, to see the red flags? Or were they just so greedy and entitled that they didn't care? Maybe they should go to jail too? Just saying.
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and he was the golden boy of the up and coming GOP crowd.
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I would like to hear his kids interviewed. Presumably they still love their parents and believe in their innocence, but all of them were on the Williams gravy train. When they were receiving all the gifts and cash didn't they think there was a connection between getting all that stuff from a total stranger and the fact that their father was governor? Weren't they smart enough, then or now, to see the red flags? Or were they just so greedy and entitled that they didn't care? Maybe they should go to jail too? Just saying.
Where's Janeane on that list?
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Why John Edwards won and Bob McDonnell lost
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Why is Bob McDonnell looking at years in a federal prison while John Edwards is walking free?
The federal government dragged both men into court on charges stemming from their role in public life: Edwards for alleged campaign finance violations relating to his mistress and McDonnell for receiving gifts from a Virginia businessman. Both cases involved large sums of money and uncomfortable discussion of the politicians’ private lives. And they contributed to the notion that politicians operate in a sphere far removed from that of working Americans.
Going into Edwards’ trial, his reputation was in tatters over his highly-publicized affair with videographer Rielle Hunter. Edwards’s life became fare for the national tabloids, which repeatedly noted that his dalliance took place as his wife Elizabeth was dying of cancer.
McDonnell, by contrast, was a relatively well-liked and successful governor whose reputation took a hit late in his term as word emerged of the gifts he and his family received from Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams Jr. Even as the details of the federal investigation spilled out late last year, McDonnell retained the support of half of Virginia voters.
Juries in federal courthouses about 200 miles apart in sleepy, mid-sized cities in the border South considered the evidence. But the results were wildly different: McDonnell was convicted of 11 felonies, while Edwards’s jury acquitted him on one count and hung on five others, prompting the feds to drop the case.
Here’s POLITICO’s guide to six ways McDonnell’s defense went sour while Edwards’s succeeded:
1) It all came down to the Rolex
McDonnell was caught with hand in the cookie jar — up to his wrist.
Unlike Edwards, McDonnell was seen as personally profiting from the largesse of a political backer, while the money prosecutors argued was chipped in to aid the ex-senator never went to him directly.
McDonnell could not escape evidence like the photo showing him smiling while showing off the $6,500 watch. His claims that he didn’t know Williams paid for it didn’t seem to persuade jurors. The pictures of him riding around in Williams’s Ferrari didn’t help his defense much either.
Prosecutors argued that the value of the expenses involved in Edwards’s case was about $900,000 — far higher than the $165,000 McDonnell and his family were accused of taking. But the money two friends of Edwards put out went to cover expenses incurred by Hunter to stay at lavish hotels and travel by private jet. It was also paid out when Edwards was a presidential candidate, not a senator.
“I talked to multiple Edwards jurors who were telling me: ‘He never touched the money.’ Here, you have indisputable visual evidence of McDonnell being on the receiving end of the benefit,” said Hampton Dellinger, a trial attorney who works in North Carolina and Washington, D.C. “That doesn’t necessarily end the legal inquiry but for jurors’ visceral gut reactions to the cases, it could be a good distinction.”
One McDonnell case juror said in a post-trial interview that it was clear the gifts McDonnell and his family took were directly linked to his public office. Kathleen Carmody told the Washington Post that jurors asked themselves: “Would the McDonnells have received these gifts if Bob McDonnell weren’t governor?…. [The] facts speak for themselves.”
Edwards’s legal team, headed by D.C. lawyer Abbe Lowell, argued that the ex-senator would have tried to hush up his affair with Hunter — and her ensuing pregnancy — even if he wasn’t running for president. Prosecutors said it was implausible that friendship alone would prompt anyone to pay up $900,000 to cover another person’s extramarital affair, but some of the payments did continue after Edwards’s presidential campaign was clearly doomed.
“Edwards was able to put in jurors’ minds whether the cover-up of the affair would have taken place regardless of whether he was running for president, that he wasn’t as much trying to save his candidacy as save his marriage,” Dellinger said.
2) When it’s all about sex, jurors recoil
Both cases offered awkward testimony about the prominent political couples’ marriages. In the McDonnell case, their union was on the table from the outset since both the governor and his wife, Maureen, were criminally charged. But the focus on marital strife came from the defense, with Maureen’s lawyer arguing at the outset of the trial that the couple’s marriage was “broken.”
At the Edwards trial, the ex-senator’s extramarital affair was the central theme and a frequent topic of discussion. Jurors even heard about Elizabeth Edwards ripping her blouse open to expose her scars from breast cancer surgery. In a page torn from the playbook used to fight President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, John Edwards’s defense suggested the federal government had spent millions investigating the tabloid tale of whether a man had a secret love child.
Prosecutors undoubtedly wanted to make Edwards seem like a bad person, but the focus on the personal may have backfired, fueling questions about the public interest served by the case.
3) Unlikable politicians should stay off the stand
Both Edwards and McDonnell are trial lawyers and politicians, confident in their own abilities to win over a crowd — or a jury.
But Edwards passed up his opportunity to lay it all out in court. The decision protected him a lengthy from cross-examination that would have surely led him through every alleged misdeed.
McDonnell went the other route, choosing to testify on his own behalf. He spent five days on the witness stand, two of them in grueling cross-examination. Jurors don’t seem to have bought his explanations that Williams’s largesse was driven solely by friendship.
“Edwards everyone knows wanted nothing more than to try to explain his side of the story the jury, but he ultimately decided to stay silent. McDonnell went another route,” noted Dellinger, now with Boies, Schiller & Flexner. “Politicians are compelling figures that lead jurors to have strong opinions. There’s a real risk when you’re a charismatic figure like that in taking the stand as a criminal defendant.”
4) Don’t throw your wife under the bus
Even if McDonnell was insistent on taking the stand, his suggestions that his wife was acting without his knowledge may have rubbed jurors the wrong way.
“He was rendered more unlikable for throwing his wife under the bus at trial,” said one prominent D.C. defense lawyer.
Edwards’s defense worked hard to paint the couple’s relationship as complicated and intense, but devoted to each other despite the infidelity. The strategy may have rehabilitated the ex-senator a bit and fed the defense narrative that the affair was hidden to avoid hurting his ailing wife.
5) Campaigns are an ethical cesspool, but governing shouldn’t be
One unintentionally comical moment in the Edwards trial came when prosecutors told jurors that donors were limited to giving $2,300 per candidate in each election. The assertion must have been baffling since the trial took place in 2012 as headlines were filled with reports of figures like Sheldon Adelson spending tens of millions of dollars on candidates like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
There are fine legal distinctions between the spending, of course, but jurors in the Edwards case seem to have accepted that campaigns are a kind of ethical cesspool where money flows freely and lying is commonplace. Whether McDonnell’s jury feels the same way about campaigns isn’t clear, but they sent a clear message Thursday that politicians should not get the all’s-fair-in-campaigns pass when trying to leverage their office for personal gain.
6) A prosecutor who learned from experience
If the prosecution outmaneuvered the defense to chalk up a win at McDonnell’s trial, some of that can likely be traced to the fact that one key member of the prosecution team in Richmond chalked up what amounted to an embarrassing loss in Greensboro.
David Harbach of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section delivered the closing arguments at both trials and he seems to have learned from mistakes at the earlier one.
In the Edwards case, prosecutors opened with Andrew Young, an unappealing former Edwards aide who was picked apart by the defense. In the McDonnell case, the prosecution led off with a caterer who took $15,000 from Williams to pay for McDonnell’s daughter’s wedding reception and then from the daughter herself. Calling Williams to the stand later may have signaled that he wasn’t the linchpin of the government’s case.
The prosecution also rolled out a relatively full cast of characters in McDonnell’s case, while in Edwards several pivotal players were never called: elderly donor Rachel Bunny Mellon, donor Fred Baron (understandably since he died in 2008), and the mistress, Hunter. Jurors may have felt that key facts were being hidden from them, something they will often hold against the prosecution after being told by the judge that the defense has no duty to present any evidence.
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A Shameful Defense Fails
The McDonnells say they weren’t lying about their finances; they were lying about everything else.
By Dahlia Lithwick
We may never fully know what led a Virginia jury to find former Gov. Bob McDonnell guilty on 11 counts of federal corruption and his wife, Maureen, guilty of nine counts. The federal investigation, indictment, and trial at first seemed something of an overreach, and right to the end, it seemed like the case might have been difficult to prove to a jury. After the trial ended in such a brisk and crushing verdict, it now seems easy to say the result was inevitable. If it was never perfectly clear that the prosecutors found the quid to the pro quo, well, in the end it didn’t matter. After weeks of trial, the jury seemed to want nothing more than to loofah off the filth and go home.
The McDonnells were indicted on 14 counts of conspiracy, bribery, and extortion for allegedly taking more than $177,000 in gifts, junkets, and cash from Jonnie Williams. He was the dodgy head of a company that made a tobacco-derived dietary supplement called Anatabloc, and he wanted the governor to push his products. The seven men and five women of the jury heard from 67 witnesses over a trial that lasted five weeks, during which time the former governor and his wife slept at separate residences, entered the courtroom through separate doors, and sat at separate defense tables, while offering up a joint defense.
If I never hear the phrase “X threw Y under a bus” again, especially with regard to this trial, I will be immensely grateful. At some point in the proceedings, it seemed as if there were so many people thrown under so many buses—wife, children, executive chef, staff—it wasn’t clear the bus could move anymore. Maureen McDonnell acceded to a legal strategy that painted her as a frosty harridan with a roving eye and a lamentable inability to manage the staff (the “Downton Abbey defense”). I still cannot accept the defense's proposition that she was somehow driving the bus when it looked to the rest of the world like she was lying under it.
It’s easy to say that everyone in power is bought and that the McDonnells simply got caught getting bought. But that doesn’t quite capture the horror of what happened here in the commonwealth in the past month. Whatever shame they brought on the office of governor by their dealings with Williams was overshadowed by the shame of their legal strategy. The jurors must have felt unimaginably filthy listening to gruesome tales of a “nutbag” first lady, rebuffed letters from the governor trying to resolve marital spats, and tween-grade text messages to a man Maureen McDonnell was allegedly “obsessed with.” That the former governor knew his career was making his wife wretched and drove on nonetheless is one thing. That he blamed her wretchedness for wrecking his career borders on felony chutzpah.
Maybe the defense strategy that the McDonnells could never have colluded because they didn’t speak was the only defense they had. But that’s their own fault. Prosecutors had offered the former governor a deal that would have had him plead guilty to a single count of fraud and would have spared his wife. The defense on display this month wasn’t the best bad option. It was the worst bad option. And it clearly wasn’t convincing. As Amy Davidson notes, you can be in a miserable marriage and still collude to take cash in exchange for pushing dietary supplements.
As the jurors begin to talk, we may begin to get some insight into why they came down so hard on the former first couple. But one possibility is that you just can’t explain lies with lies. And the McDonnell strategy always seemed to be just that: “We couldn’t have been lying to you about our finances, Virginia, because we were too busy lying to you about everything else. We lied about our marriage for years. We lied about our values and our integrity. We lied about our political and economic convictions. We lied about the centrality of family and marriage to our vision of governance.” In the end, when the jurors were asked to believe one more lie—that the McDonnells’ whole life was an “act” (a lie that may or may not now come true, if the McDonnells’ marriage fails to survive this spectacle) to explain the other lies—it may have been too much to sanction.
Nothing about this spectacular political fall is good news. The commonwealth of Virginia has had to watch as the nation snickered at the naive belief in “the Virginia way,” a marriage is likely ruined, five children are shattered, and the public certainty that government is unfixable and contemptible has a new Exhibit A.
Maybe the verdict will generate some interest in the Virginia General Assembly about fixing state ethics laws. But probably not. Maybe those of us who feel sorry for the McDonnells, because greed and unhappiness are human and everyone makes mistakes, should recognize that our prisons are full of good people who also made mistakes. And maybe husbands and wives in America can agree, for future reference, that if “for better or for worse” means anything, it means not eviscerating each other in public. It’s hard to know whether the jury was more bothered by the corruption allegations or about the lies spun to excuse them. But if the McDonnell trial can achieve the demise of the “don’t blame me for my greediness, it’s my crazy wife’s fault” defense, whether used legally or at happy hours, we should perhaps all be grateful.
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Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell loses Liberty University teaching job
McDonnell and his wife Maureen were convicted on multiple counts of corruption Thursday. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell said McDonnell is not scheduled to teach any courses at the school in the fall.
by Leslie Larson
Ex-Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has lost his teaching gig at Liberty University.
The Christian college announced on Friday they had ditched the disgraced politician after he was convicted on multiple federal corruption charges.
Liberty President Jerry Falwell had called the former governor “a longtime friend of the university” in April, when McDonnell was appointed a visiting professor in government.
“He achieved great success as governor in making Virginia one of the nation’s most business-friendly and fiscally sound states while getting people to work together for the common good. These experiences uniquely qualify him to teach our students about every aspect of serving in public office,” the school said in its announcement.
But after his fall from grace, his unique qualifications are no longer in demand.
Falwell said McDonnell wasn’t scheduled to teach any classes during the fall semester and wouldn’t be returning in the spring, according to WSET-TV.
McDonnell and his estranged wife Maureen were found guilty of public corruption on September 4. A jury found the couple accepted gifts and loans from former Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams in exchange for using the governor’s office to promote his products.
The McDonnells will be sentenced in January and could face 20 years in prison.
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lib witch hunt.
obama accept millions in bribes daily, and nobody says a thing. perry commits a few felonies to pander to his 67 IQ base, and everyone loses their shit. come on, people.
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For Bob McDonnell, a Miscalculation at the Scene of a Blunder
By JASON HOROWITZ
WASHINGTON — On Aug. 15, 2013, Bob McDonnell visited the site of one of Virginia’s great tactical blunders.
As part of his final official tour of the state as its governor, Mr. McDonnell went to Ball’s Bluff State Park in Leesburg, where more than 150 years ago a Union army scout crossed the Potomac River and mistook a row of trees for an unguarded Confederate camp. The next morning, Union soldiers approached the trunks and branches and soon found themselves surrounded by well-armed Mississippi infantrymen. By the end of the skirmish, Confederate soldiers had killed nearly half of the Union troops, many of them pushed off the bluff and into the Potomac.
Even by the time of his visit, Mr. McDonnell seemed likely to enter the state’s history books for his own bad judgment — accepting extravagant gifts and generous loans from a Richmond businessman seeking favor from the governor’s office. On Thursday, the ink dried when a federal jury found him guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, bribery and extortion.
At Ball’s Bluff last year, Mr. McDonnell announced $2.2 million in grants for battlefield preservation. As he sat in sunglasses on a white folding chair, James Lighthizer, the president of the Civil War Trust, said that ultimately Mr. McDonnell would be most remembered for conserving Civil War battlefields. “He has done more for battlefield preservation than any other governor in the United States of America,” Mr. Lighthizer said.
The governor, wearing a dark suit, yellow tie and perfectly parted hair, gave a short speech, posed for photos and fired a cannon. As a woman from The Civil War News interviewed Civil War re-enactors, Mr. McDonnell answered questions from reporters about whether he would be remembered more for his acceptance of Rolex watches.
“Listen,” he said. “I think people are forgiving and I’ve made an apology for the distraction that this has caused the people of Virginia. And the decisions that have accounted for that. I’ve paid back all the loans, my counsel has informed me, all the tangible gifts now have been given back. But I think people are fair and they know that over these four years Virginia is a leader in so many areas and people really evaluate things over all about how does it feel for me and my family at the kitchen table. You know, I have got five kids. I grew up a normal average middle-class guy here in Fairfax County and I just had the extraordinary fortune to have the same job as Jefferson and Henry so I consider myself pretty normal.” He was referring to Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, both of whom were Virginia governors.
As he was about to get back into his S.U.V., he was asked whether he had any ambitions for the future.
“You know,” he said. “I’m the kind of person who believes you do one thing at a time. I learned in the army as a lieutenant you take one hill at a time, you take the one in front of you, not the one behind you. And I have immense faith in God that if you do something well now you will have lot of opportunities later on, so I’m not worried about it right now.”
But how did he actually intend to spend the hours out of office? He talked about working out and watching his waistline, and then his eyes lit up.
“I would love to spend about a month on a beach,” he said. “Just reading books. I’ve got 25 books on my night stand. Actually 26. I just got the battle of Ball’s Bluff now. I got a bunch of them there I’d like to read. But that, honestly, a little R and R and a lot of pleasure reading is what I’d like to do.”
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Del. Ken Plum: The Legacy of Bob McDonnell
Opinion by Del. Ken Plum
I had no idea what to expect when the jury announced it had reached its verdicts on the charges against former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen, but when the verdicts were announced I was stunned.
The jury of seven men and five women left no doubt in their findings: eleven counts of guilty for the former Governor and nine counts of guilty for his wife! All the efforts to explain away their behavior, redefine their relationship, and nuance words and actions were not successful.
Virginia has now achieved the level of disdain we have held towards governors of other states in similar circumstances. We have a former governor found guilty of corruption in office. Somehow with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson having occupied that seat, it was not supposed to happen in Virginia.
Bob McDonnell is the last person anyone would have thought would have brought this legacy to Virginia. He served his country in the military. He has three degrees from a Christian university. He married a professional cheerleader from a major league football team. The thesis for his masters’ degree spelled out an old-fashioned morality that he thought was essential for how people should behave. He was a prosecuting attorney finding others guilty of crimes in order to keep his community safe. He represented his community in the House of Delegates where he introduced bills that included one for a covenant marriage. His first statewide elective office was Attorney General responsible for seeing that Virginia’s laws were fairly interpreted. His win for Governor was by a wide margin. He appeared squeaky clean.
The jury heard in detail what happened during his term as governor and determined he was guilty of corruption. That is the way our system of justice works. Not only is his legacy tarnished so too is that of his wife and family. For the Governor and his family on a personal level, they have my thoughts and sincere prayers. There will be an appeal, no doubt. Whatever the criminal justice system does with the case under appeal will not restore the man to the elevated position he had in the public’s mind when he became governor.
We need to turn our attention now to the legacy for Virginia. Maybe we Virginians had it coming for we had become somewhat pompous over our reputation for the clean government we thought we had. Despite some cynics’ views, virtually all elected officials and government employees are honest, hard-working people who want to do their best for the Commonwealth. For those who do not fit this category we need to participate in a whistle-blowing exercise that will expose any who are putting their selfish gain above the public good. And the legislature needs to do more work on its conflict of interest and ethics laws. Maybe those changes can become the legacy of Bob McDonnell.
Ken Plum represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates.
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Ex-Va. governor Robert McDonnell asks for acquittal of public corruption charges
By Matt Zapotosky
Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell on Thursday asked a federal judge to acquit him of the public corruption charges of which he stands convicted or at least grant him a new trial — arguing that the guilty verdicts stemmed from “insufficient evidence” and “numerous legal errors during the proceedings.”
The arguments — at least those that are public so far — are ones that McDonnell’s attorneys raised even before the trial of him and his wife began, and experts say U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer is likely to reject them again. McDonnell (R) can still appeal the case after his sentencing, which is scheduled for Jan. 6.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted this month of public corruption charges after jurors determined that they effectively sold the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for $177,000 in gifts, vacations and sweetheart loans. In their motions Thursday evening, the McDonnells argued that those convictions were flawed — in large part, they said, because McDonnell did not perform any “official acts” or promise to perform specific acts for Williams.
To substantiate the public corruption charges, prosecutors were required to prove that McDonnell either performed, or promised to perform, such acts.
“No reasonable juror could conclude from this record that the accused promised to exercise (or influence others to exercise) any governmental power to benefit Mr. Williams,” defense attorneys wrote. “The most the Government established, granting it the benefit of all reasonable inferences, is that Mr. McDonnell facilitated Mr. Williams’ access to certain government decision-makers so that Mr. Williams could attempt to persuade them to his cause.”
The motions preview what experts say might form the basis of the McDonnells’ appeals, especially when it comes to the notion of “official acts.” In arguing for a new trial, both Bob and Maureen McDonnell asserted that the judge improperly defined “official acts” for jurors. The said the court’s broad definition “invited the jurors to find that official acts can be nothing more than arranging meetings, attending events, or emailing subordinates,” and that was improper.
Prosecutors alleged that the official acts McDonnell took on Williams’s behalf included arranging a meeting for Williams with a state health official, allowing him to host an event at the governor’s mansion to promote his company’s dietary supplement, Anatabloc, and permitting him to invite guests to another mansion event that was intended for health-care leaders.
They also alleged that McDonnell worked in subtle ways to encourage state university researchers to perform studies of Williams’s product. The studies were something Williams long sought but never actually got.
Defense attorneys addressed each alleged official act in turn, referring to trial testimony as they argued that none constituted a crime. They contended that Williams never testified about an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement with the governor but only about “his vague belief that Mr. McDonnell would provide unspecified ‘help’ at some indeterminate point in time.”
And they cited, for comparison, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II’s relationship with Williams, noting that he received gifts from Williams and introduced the businessman to a lobbyist whose brother is chairman of the state tobacco commission. Williams had hoped that the commission would held fund studies of Anatabloc.
“But no one would claim that this was a crime, because introducing someone to a lobbyist does not constitute ‘official action,’ ” defense attorneys wrote. “The same is true here.”
Defense attorneys laid out several other grounds that they say justify an acquittal or new trial. They argued the public corruption charges were unconstitutionally vague. They argued — as they have in the past — that some of the counts of which McDonnell was convicted required prosecutors to show that his actions affected interstate commerce and that they did not do so. (Prosecutors contend that they needed only to prove that McDonnell intended to affect interstate commerce and that his and his wife’s promotion of Anatabloc did that.)
Defense attorneys also argued that prosecutors should not have been allowed to present evidence that McDonnell’s staffers discussed preparing materials to show the governor where he could play golf for free, nor should they have been allowed to show evidence that McDonnell accepted an expensive island vacation from Henrico hotelier William H. Goodwin Jr. and failed to report it on state required economic disclosure forms. They argued pre-trial publicity prevented a fair trial, and prospective jurors were not questioned extensively enough before the proceedings began.
Maureen McDonnell’s attorneys argued, as they have in the past, that the judge should have separated her trial from her husband’s. Maureen McDonnell also moved Thursday to be acquitted on an obstruction of justice charge of which she alone was convicted.
Spencer has heard — and rejected — virtually all of the arguments before, many more than once. While he is likely to do so again, experts say the McDonnells might have a greater chance of success with the judges who ultimately hear their appeal.
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Who's paid for the McDonnells' 20 lawyers?
By Joanne Kimberlin
Fifteen for him + five for her = 20 lawyers.
That’s the headcount inside the two defense teams orbiting former first couple Bob and Maureen McDonnell at their federal corruption trial in Richmond.
Who’s footing their fees, now estimated by some to reach $2 million?
Not taxpayers, though the troubles of the ex-governor and his wife have cost Virginians close to $800,000 – a public meter that continues to tick.
But first, the private money.
...the McDonnells are responsible for their own legal bills, a heavy load considering the financial straits they’ve aired in court and the top-shelf talent they’ve hired.
To help out, around 100 supporters have donated a total of $253,690 – according to the latest IRS filing from the “Restoration Fund” – but the collection is only for Bob McDonnell’s defense, not the first lady’s, and it won’t come close to covering even his tab.
The bulk of the McDonnells’ attorneys come from three global law firms with Washington offices. Their teams feature veteran lawyers with national pedigrees, including four former federal prosecutors and one special counsel to President George W. Bush.
In other words: expensive.
Peter Greenspun, a Fairfax attorney, says the going rate for D.C.-area lawyers in those leagues can top $750 an hour. Early projections put the McDonnells’ bill at roughly $1 million, “but if they’re paying by the hour, full retail,” Greenspun said, the total could wind up “double that.”
Greenspun, who defended Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad, convicted in 2003 in Virginia Beach, said there are plenty of variables: Only the teams’ lead attorneys are likely to bill at the top tier, and the McDonnells may have negotiated for a flat or discounted rate, given the high-profile nature of the case.
Jason Miyares, a Virginia Beach attorney involved with the Restoration Fund, won’t say how donations are faring. That information doesn’t have to be divulged until mid-October, when the fund’s next quarterly tax report is due. On Friday, a search for its website, therestorationfund.com, turned up a notice that the site’s domain name expired July 31 and had not been renewed.
On its most recent quarterly report – filed June 30 – the fund reported paying out $175,040, the majority to three law firms working on behalf of the ex-governor. Richard Gilliam, a coal magnate from the western part of the state, remained at the top of its donor list, with a $50,000 contribution. One person gave $15,000, and six – including Mitt Romney – gave $10,000 apiece.
A few others on the donor list with local name recognition:
Teri Rigell, wife of U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell ($5,000), state Sen. Jeff McWaters ($5,000), Town Center developers Lou Haddad and Dan Hoffler ($2,000 each), retired Virginia Beach prosecutor Harvey Bryant ($300) and former U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake ($200), who also was director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation in McDonnell’s administration.
Taxpayers come into play on the prosecution side, but a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office handling the McDonnell case said the federal government doesn’t track the cost of individual cases.
As for Virginia’s public money, $795,000 was spent last year to cover bills from two private law firms who supplied counsel to state employees involved in the case, including the governor.
Normally, that kind of advice would come from the office of the state attorney general, but Ken Cuccinelli, attorney general at the time, decided to recuse himself from the case, citing a conflict of interest.
Cuccinelli once owned stock in Star Scientific, the company the McDonnells are accused of promoting in exchange for bribes from its chief executive.
Mark Herring, the current attorney general, cut the private firms loose when he took office in January, saying their services were no longer needed.
But according to Herring spokesman Michael Kelly, Gov. Terry McAuliffe later rehired at least one of those law firms.
McAuliffe’s office did not return messages left by The Pilot last week asking about the rehiring of the firms or requesting their latest invoices.
According to an article published in May in the Washington Post, McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said the governor reversed Herring’s decision to make sure state employees called to testify at the corruption trial have legal representation without racking up their own bills.
Notable donors
Richard Gilliam, a coal magnate from western Virginia: $50,000
Mitt Romney: $10,000
Teri Rigell, wife of U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell: $5,000
State Sen. Jeff McWaters: $5,000
Lou Haddad and Dan Hoffler, Town Center developers: $2,000 each
Harvey Bryant, retired Virginia Beach prosecutor: $300
Former U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake, who served under the McDonnell administration: $200
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Bob McDonnell’s shocking stupidity: How could a politician have been this dumb?
Latest GOP governor to humiliate himself -- and break the law -- endured a crazy saga. Here's why it's so surreal
by Jim Newell
On a level of basic human sympathy, it’s painful to see anyone, including former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and first lady Maureen McDonnell, sob through the jury’s reading of 11 and nine guilty counts, respectively. They have children and grandchildren and, barring an appeal, are likely headed to jail for a significant chunk of time. And that’s after, in a desperate, quirky and ultimately unsuccessful defense, they laid bare the daily troubles with their marriage for the world to absorb. It felt dirty to watch the trial, and I, at least, didn’t feel it was necessary to write daily updates about the tabloid trash revealed in court on any particular day.
But what must be most painful for the McDonnells right now is the knowledge of how completely avoidable this was. There’s nothing even approaching honor or pride in these transgressions. There’s no crime here that you can convince yourself was the right call as a statesman; you can’t even say, in some sort of Nixonian way, "all I had in mind, the whole time, was the good of the people of Virginia." There’s nothing like that here, unless you think that Virginians really needed the dietary supplement Anatabloc in order to live long and prosper. Bob and Maureen McDonnell will go down as the first Virginia first couple to go down on criminal charges … because they took a bunch of cash and golf trips and Rolexes.
Cash, golf trips, Rolexes, vacations, checks, vacations, Ferrari rides: The components of the $100,000+ in gifts and loans that they received from Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams Sr., in exchange for using the powers of the governorship to promote his dumb diet pill thing, couldn’t have been a shinier bundle of objects for the prosecution to present to the jury. In modern politics, corruption charges are usually more tediously complex: Money was wired here and then laundered via a pass-through, which made its way through another pass-through and was distributed through a foundation before ending up at a nonprofit designed to help such and such’s interests with a client trying to change regulations in foreign markets, or whatever. Not in this case. The prosecution just had to show the jury images of the idiot governor showing off his flashy watch that was given to him by the rich businessman for whom he did favors in return. How much simpler could this get? It’s only a degree of reality or two away from an old-timey political cartoon of a tuxedoed plutocrat, smoking a cigar, handing over a big bag marked “$$$,” to a crooked politician slapping his back and cackling.
God, the stupidity.
Even when the McDonnells realized they’d been caught, and indicted, for cartoonish quid pro quo corruption, they inexplicably continued to roll the dice. You’d think they’d realize, Oh god, they caught us taking lots of money from this guy, better strike a deal! And yet they didn’t. Bob McDonnell rejected a plea deal that would have charged him with one felony and let Maureen McDonnell off free. Whoops!
The McDonnells — or each McDonnell, given the state of their marriage — must have decided that they had a fantastic chance of defeating this in court. Umm. Did they talk to their lawyers before rejecting that deal? Because the defense — the now infamous defense — that they took in court reeked of desperation all the way through. If you’re willing to testify for days about the stunning levels of dysfunction in your marriage, as the best hope for your exoneration, doesn’t that suggest that you may not have the strongest case? Doesn’t that suggest that perhaps you would’ve been better taking a plea deal? It didn’t even cohere. The idea that Bob and Maureen McDonnell were on such bad terms that there was no way they could have had a discussion or two about taking this guy’s money just doesn’t make sense.
The obvious explanation for Bob McDonnell’s tears is that he’s going to jail for a while. It would make me cry, too! But you also get the feeling that Bob McDonnell hadn’t come to terms with the hubris, and all of the missteps along the way, until this was read. These were crimes of such classic simplicity that a defendant could, at least for a while, convince himself of the unreality of it all. That there’s no way he could have gotten caught up in such a self-parody of a scheme, or that a jury would actually send him to jail over these things. Did this really happen?
Yeah, it really did. It’s hard to believe for us, too.
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They were pushing the envelope from day one. >:(
Mansion spending records indicate improper billing by Virginia governor and his family
By Laura Vozzella June 16, 2013
RICHMOND — Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and his wife, Maureen, have used taxpayer money for a range of small personal items they should have paid for themselves under state policy, according to spending records.
The McDonnells have billed the state for body wash, sunscreen, dog vitamins and a digestive system “detox cleanse,” the records show. They also have used state employees to run personal errands for their adult children. In the middle of a workday, for example, a staffer retrieved Rachel McDonnell’s newly hemmed pants at a tailoring shop nine miles from the governor’s mansion. Another time, a state worker was dispatched to a dry cleaner 20 miles away to pick up a storage box for Cailin McDonnell’s wedding dress.
About six months into the governor’s term, the official who oversees mansion spending told the McDonnells that they should not have charged taxpayers for a number of expenses, including deodorant, shoe repairs and dry-cleaning their children’s clothing. The official asked the McDonnells to pay the state back more than $300, which they did, and also gave them a refresher on what the state will and won’t provide for occupants of the governor’s mansion.
But since that time, state records show that the McDonnells have continued to let taxpayers pick up the tab for numerous personal items, including vitamins, nasal spray and sleep-inducing elixirs.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, The Washington Post sought records of personal expenses covered by the state over the couple’s 31 / 2 years in the mansion. The full cost of those items is unknown because the state released only 16 sales receipts, most of them from 2011. State records show that there were many more personal shopping trips — nine others in January 2011 alone, including two to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up “college stuff” for the McDonnells’ children.
The McDonnells repaid the state for at least some personal items purchased on those occasions. But without receipts, it is impossible to know whether they fully reimbursed taxpayers. The few receipts that were released show only partial repayment.
McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin declined to say why other receipts were not released.
Based on the disclosed records, the amount of personal expenses the McDonnells billed to the state is small — less than $600, including the $300 they repaid. But the disclosure comes at time when spending at Virginia’s Executive Mansion is already under scrutiny.
The FBI and a federal grand jury are investigating the $15,000 catering tab at Cailin McDonnell’s mansion wedding in June 2011 that was paid by a McDonnell campaign donor. That same donor, Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr., also lent the governor his Ferrari, lakeside vacation home and private jet. A Richmond prosecutor also is investigating whether the governor violated state gift disclosure laws.
Emerging as the former mansion chef faces charges of stealing food from the kitchen, the McDonnells’ expense records provide some insight into how the executive home has been managed. The chef has alleged that the McDonnells — already entitled to a free mansion, food, personal chef, maids and one of nation’s few state-funded butlers — have engaged in petty pilfering.
In court filings submitted as part of his defense, chef Todd Schneider has said that the McDonnells’ five children raided the mansion kitchen and liquor cabinet, taking large quantities of food and alcohol to their own homes or college dorm rooms. He also said that Maureen McDonnell had given away mansion pots and pans to her three daughters. McDonnell has declined to respond to those accusations, noting the ongoing criminal case against the chef.
Martin said the McDonnells have sought to properly distinguish personal expenses from state ones while living in the mansion, a 200-year-old Federal-style gem that is a public building and a private residence.
“Every Administration strives to balance private family life with the official state functions that are all occurring under the same roof, at the same time,” Martin said in an e-mail. “It is a balance and there is a constant effort to ensure that it is appropriately managed. The McDonnell Administration has adhered to precedent in reimbursing the state for items meant for personal use.”
In the McDonnell family’s first six months in the mansion, taxpayers paid for dry-cleaning the twin sons’ suits and shirts, repairing the first lady’s shoes and putting new shoulder pads into an item of her clothing. The McDonnells billed their energy drinks, body wash, deodorant and breath-freshening strips to the state as well.
Virginians paid for a $62 laminated banner to celebrate the twins’ high school graduation, with a state employee picking up the sign at the print shop and paying for it with the mansion credit card. When Ginger, the sheltie/terrier mix billed as “Virginia’s first dog,” needed vitamins, the McDonnells passed the $9.49 expense to taxpayers.
Eventually, an official who reviews mansion spending kicked those expenses back and asked the McDonnells to reimburse the commonwealth $317.27. The McDonnells paid the money back.
“These expenses are personal ones, that due to auditing and the direction of Dennis Johnson, Division Director of DSAS [Division of Selected Agency Support Services], cannot be covered by the State or Mansion funds,” mansion director Sarah Scarbrough said in a note to the McDonnells in the fall of 2010.
The state will cover the cost of dry-cleaning for the governor and first lady, basic hygiene items, “including toilet paper, mouthwash, bar soap,” cleaning and laundry supplies, and food for family meals, state functions and events, Johnson said in the memo.
But it does not cover the cost of clothing alterations, dry-cleaning for other family members, deodorant or body wash, pet food or treats, or food for non-family meals or non-state functions, Johnson wrote.
The McDonnells directly pushed back on one front, insisting that the state continue to pay for their energy drinks. The governor’s chief of staff, Martin Kent, overruled Johnson to allow the drinks at state expense.
“While other governors and spouses may have had bacon and eggs, or cereal, or etc for breakfast, Governor McDonnell drinks Boost every morning, and the First Lady has a 5-Hour energy and/or a Boost,” Martin wrote. “That is their breakfast. And that is why those items are covered, just like breakfast is covered for EVERY Governor and First Lady.”
Like all new governors and their families, the McDonnells were told the expense rules at the outset of the administration but needed some time for them to sink in, Johnson said in an interview. Energy drinks aside, Johnson said that ever since he gave the McDonnells their refresher on what the state will and won’t pay for, their spending has been in line with state policy.
“Typically when an administration comes in, we do discuss things,” he said. “There are growing pains, and early on in the administration, there will be some things we have to review and discuss.”
But sales receipts released by the state indicate that energy drinks are not the only extra the governor and first lady have continued to get at state expense. They went on to bill taxpayers for myriad medicine-cabinet products, vitamins and the body wash that Johnson said shouldn’t be billed, records show.
Records also show that the McDonnells used state employees to run personal errands for their children — and directed the employees to use the mansion credit card to pay for their children’s personal items.
In some cases, personal items for the McDonnell children are the only products listed on mansion credit card receipts. In those instances, the errands do not appear to have been performed in conjunction with any official state business.
In July 2011, for example, a state employee picked up Rachel McDonnell’s hemmed pants at Lucy’s Divine Creations, located 20 minutes west of the mansion. And that November, a worker was dispatched to Handcraft Cleaners, 30 minutes away, to get a box for Cailin McDonnell’s wedding dress. The $24 charge for the hemming and the $49.50 cost of the box went on the mansion credit card. The McDonnells later repaid the state for those personal expenses, but not for the use of employee time.
Martin said that Maureen McDonnell would have run those errands herself, but because she is the first lady, she must always travel with a security detail.
“First Ladies have Executive Police Protection,” Martin wrote. “They cannot just jump in their own car and run errands. Therefore the reimbursement process exists to allow First Families to reimburse for personal items that may have been picked up by staff.”
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A tragedy for Robert McDonnell, a nightmare for the political system
By Jennifer Rubin
Virginians are still reeling from former governor Robert F. McDonnell’s conviction on 11 corruption charges. If the indictment seemed unreal, the number of counts, the potential length of the sentence, the unseemly details about his marriage and the magnitude of the lapse in judgment are nearly incomprehensible. At times it has seemed as if there is some other governor, not the former Army officer and sober politician who has been a fixture in state politics for 20 years, at the center of the storm. When one considers the generous terms of a plea bargain (his wife, Maureen, walks and he pleads to a single non-corruption count) he rejected, McDonnell’s plunge from the political stratosphere is akin to a Shakespearean tragedy. Pure hubris has ruined a lifetime of achievement and sterling reputation.
And still . . . there is an appeal. As serious as McDonnell’s predicament is, there is widespread agreement he has ample grounds for appeal. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:
“Overall, it’s obviously a victory for the government and a victory for the government’s theory that selling the prestige of the office amounts to an ‘honest services fraud,’ ” said Andrew McBride, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, now a partner at the Wiley Rein law firm.
“(But) I think there will be a substantial and important legal appeal on the issue of what constitutes an official act, and what kind of breach of fiduciary duty is necessary to establish ‘honest services’ fraud,” McBride added. “These are issues that the Supreme Court has explored, and the Supreme Court has generally been very hostile to a broad reading of the honest services statute.”
McBride noted that the high court rejected the theory of honest services fraud in 1987 but then Congress re-established it by statue in 1988. However, the Supreme Court in 2010 interpreted that statute “fairly narrowly” in a case involving former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, saying it covered only bribery or extortion schemes, McBride said.
Indeed, part of the shock is attributable to the innocuous nature of the favors McDonnell provided. The reaction of many lawyers and political insiders is best summed up as “That can get you convicted?!” Well, that is the question of the day and the subject of an appeal. (“I think it’s fair to say that the government stretched the statute a little bit for this case, and Judge Spencer gave them very favorable instructions that really in some ways — in my view — almost guaranteed conviction on the wire fraud count,” McBride is quoted as saying.)
Realization that the conviction may serve to criminalize a whole range of standard behavior that has been a fixture of politics at all levels of government for decades has sent political heads spinning. On his firm’s blog, a Virginia lawyer explains:
Under the defense version, the defense has a strong argument that Bob McDonnell did nothing “official” for Jonnie Williams and Star Scientific, because he did not award a contract, hire an employee, issue a license, pass a law, etc. But under the prosecution version, where an “official action” may include “acts that a public official customarily performs, even if those actions are not described in any law, rule, or job description,” even something as minimal as asking an aide to report to him on what was happening with the Anatabloc studies could be seen as an “official action” because it is the sort of thing that governors customarily do.
McDonnell’s best chance lies with the precedent in the Mike Espy case:
Sun-Diamond was fined $1.5 million for giving $5,900 in gifts to Clinton Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy — tickets to the Super Bowl, tickets to the U.S. Tennis Open, etc. The indictments did not charge that Espy specifically DID anything after receiving the gifts, so it was not prosecuted as a bribery or “honest services fraud” case. Granted, there were plenty of things that a Secretary of Agriculture does that could benefit Sun-Diamond, but there was no link between the gifts and whatever those official actions might be.
The fine was reversed on appeal. . . Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion, for a unanimous court, said that the prosecutor’s interpretation of the law was so broad that even a high school principal could be in legal trouble for giving a souvenir baseball cap to a visiting Secretary of Education. The language that the defense particularly liked was where Scalia distinguished between actions that are assuredly “official acts” in some sense — such as “receiving [] sports teams at the White House, visiting [a] high school, and speaking to [] farmers about USDA policy” — and the narrower category of “official acts” that fall within the bribery laws. Surely, giving President Obama a Seattle Seahawks jersey when he welcomed the Seahawks to the White House after they won the Super Bowl last year would not constitute a bribe.
The prosecution will point to the conviction of Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, famously found to have stashed wads of cash in his freezer. In that case, “The Fourth Circuit approved jury instructions that said that an “act may be official even if it was not taken pursuant to responsibilities explicitly assigned by law. Rather official acts include those activities that have been clearly established by settled practice as part [of] a public official’s position.” If that is the rule, McDonnell is looking at a stiff jail sentence.
At this point, ingratitude should be the watchword when dealing with donors and rich friends. The safest advice to any politicians is that they give no tickets, invitations or introductions for anyone who has ever given them anything significant, be it a gift or campaign donations. Consider, for example, a big donor who raises millions for a president’s campaign. He then gets invited to a state dinner or gets an award for being a great American. That sort of conduct suddenly becomes high-risk.
The discretion afforded to prosecutors in the post-McDonnell era would be jaw-dropping. How many donors (big or small) have gotten state dinner invitations or access to government agencies (e.g. Solyndra) or even help navigating the bureaucracy, let alone an ambassadorship, in the past few years? Is a Republican prosecutor going to start indicting the Obamas and is a Democratic prosecutor going to go after the speaker of the House, the Senate minority leader and every Republican governor he can find? That is certainly a recipe for disaster.
While true that lawmakers themselves can set concrete rules and thereby limit prosecutorial free-roaming, the optics of passing legislation to protect themselves from corruption charges is so horrible that it may be impossible to achieve. A lot therefore rides on McDonnell’s appeal — for him, the entire political class and thousands of donors.
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Virginians to Bob McDonnell: Go to jail, go directly to jail
by Doug Thompson
A common mantra of politicians is something along the line of “let the people decide.”
The claim, of course, is false. Politicians, as a rule, don’t give a damn about what “the people” think and realize that most people feel the same way about the politicians.
For convicted felon Bob McDonnell, former governor of Virginia, “letting the people decide” would put him in prison for his crimes against the Commonwealth.
“The people” want McDonald to spend some time behind bars for her part of the illegal solicitation of payoffs and bribes from former and disgraced dietary drug kingpin Jonnie Williams.
“The strong pubic support for prison times demonstrates the extent to which the public is furious with ethical misconduct in Richmond,” Mary Washington political science professor Stephen Farnsworth told The Associated Press. “These results demonstrate the depth of voter anger with politicians who are thought to take better care of the well-connected than of ordinary citizens. Lawmakers ignore this resentment at their peril.”
A poll of 1,000 Virginians by Princeton Survey Associated International found 60 percent wanted to see McDonnell in the slammer. Even a majority of Republicans (57 percent) wanted prison time for one of their own.
McDonnell and his wife have a sentencing hearing on Jan. 6. Both could spend a decade or more in prison.
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Future of Bob McDonnell's gifts still cloudy
by By Jim Nolan
The two gold Oscar de la Renta dresses. The Louis Vuitton shoes, handbag and raincoat. The golf clubs, bags, shirts and shoes.
The Rolex.
These luxury gifts — among the thousands of dollars in merchandise that onetime dietary supplement CEO Jonnie Williams purchased for former Gov. Bob McDonnell and first lady Maureen McDonnell and their children — were the eye-popping centerpieces of the evidence prosecutors used at trial to build a successful corruption case against the former first couple.
Bob McDonnell’s sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 6; Maureen McDonnell’s sentencing was rescheduled last week and will now be held Feb. 20. Lawyers for the couple have said they will appeal their convictions.
The sentencings and any future court proceeding could lead to the designer goods taking one more stroll down the legal runway in a courtroom. But once the legal process has concluded, the issue of what happens to the notorious baubles the McDonnells received will need to be sorted out, and the answer may not be so straightforward.
Potential outcomes
Typically, if the federal government seizes assets as part of a prosecution that results in a conviction, a hearing is held, with either the jury or the judge presiding, on a government motion seeking forfeiture of the items.
A third party can also file a claim seeking the assets, which also must be adjudicated. But in the absence of such a claim, the U.S. Marshals take possession of the assets and can liquidate them at their discretion.
In a narcotics prosecution, for example, any confiscated drugs are destroyed, while assets seized from the dealers — cars, houses, jewelry — are typically auctioned off.
Charles James, a former federal prosecutor and chief deputy Virginia attorney general, said the circumstances of a case sometimes put the government in the position of owning, albeit briefly, some oddball assets.
He recalled a prosecution of a drug ring in Richmond roughly 10 years ago in which the government ended up briefly assuming ownership of two motels that had been used as drug distribution centers.
“When a defendant’s assets aren’t liquid, the Marshals Service has to dispose of them, and at times that means everything from running a hotel to owning a ranch to auctioning artwork and luxury cars,” James said.
Money from the liquidation, he said, “ultimately funds new equipment and other functions for law enforcement, and often is a huge motivation for agencies to participate in federal investigations.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment on the gifts and their forfeiture, or potential use or sale going forward. The office even refused to say where the items in question are being stored.
Page 42 of the McDonnells’ Jan. 21 federal indictment provides a lengthy list of the items prosecutors contend are subject to forfeiture.
They include three pairs of designer shoes, five dresses, five golf shirts, three golf bags, two sets of golf clubs, assorted jackets, coats and sweaters, one silver Rolex watch engraved “71st Governor of Virginia,” and 30 boxes of Anatabloc — the dietary supplement Williams was trying to influence the McDonnells to promote.
But a number of the items listed in the indictment were, in fact, returned to Williams well before the couple were charged.
In March 2013, Maureen McDonnell returned a box of Williams’ gifts to his home shortly after her interview with state police. The box included the dress the former first lady had worn to her daughter’s 2011 wedding at the Executive Mansion and another dress she wore to commemorate her 35th wedding anniversary.
And in August 2013, Bob McDonnell and representatives of his legal team said that the former governor had returned to Williams the “tangible” gifts that were still in the governor’s possession, including the $6,500 engraved Rolex watch.
Williams ended up cooperating with the government against the first couple as part of a wide ranging transactional immunity agreement that allowed him to avoid potential criminal charges in the McDonnell case and an unrelated securities matter.
Williams’ property?
James, now in private practice as a partner at Williams Mullen, said an argument could be made that items Williams purchased that were returned to him would, in fact, be the property of the former Star Scientific CEO.
“The court’s authority to order forfeiture only extends to the defendant,” he said. “As a result Jonnie Williams could be rightfully viewed as the owner of the dress, the watch and other gifts, and the government could be compelled to return the evidence to Williams as the rightful owner, leaving him to decide how best to dispose of them.”
So what does a former dietary supplement salesman do with an Oscar De la Renta dress? Or a pair of black Rebecca Minkoff shoes? Or a Rolex inscribed “71st Governor of Virginia?”
Williams could not be reached for comment and his lawyer, former Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, declined to comment.
But during the trial last August, Williams said he had no practical use for the dresses that Maureen McDonnell had returned to him — part of an attempt by the first lady, prosecutors successfully argued — to obstruct justice by making it look like the garments had been loans, not gifts.
People familiar with the case and the prosecution’s star witness said that if Williams were to retain ownership of the gifts he gave the McDonnells, he would likely seek to donate, or sell off the items with a view toward using the proceeds for charity.
Historic items
Whether they are auctioned by the government or let go by Williams, at least some of the ill-given gifts are likely to attract interest — from the curious to the serious, who recognize a historical value in items that figured in the first conviction of a governor in Virginia history.
The Valentine Museum has a collection of dresses worn by former Virginia first ladies, in addition to other gubernatorial memorabilia, such as Gov. Linwood Holton’s World War II uniform, and the pen set Gov. Andrew Jackson Montague used to sign the Virginia Constitution in 1902.
William Martin, director of the The Valentine Museum in Richmond, said some of the items that figured in the trial, such as a dress worn by the first lady and the inscribed Rolex watch, could be of interest to institutions like The Valentine, the Virginia Historical Society or the Library of Virginia.
“I think all of the collecting institutions in the city would probably work together to have something to mark what is a historical period,” said Martin.
Currently the only item at The Valentine from the four years of the McDonnell administration is a bottle of wine produced from the chambourcin grapes the first lady planted at the Executive Mansion to honor the 200th anniversary of the residence in 2013.
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Former Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell wants new trial over jury issues
By The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Lawyers for former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said Thursday he should get a new trial on corruption charges because the jury in his case was potentially biased and may have acted improperly.
McDonnell's lawyers filed court documents saying U.S. District Judge James Spencer did not properly examine whether potential jurors had been unfairly swayed by pre-trial news coverage. Defense attorneys also argued that Spencer should have investigated a potential claim that jurors who were ultimately picked may have discussed the trial among themselves before they were allowed to do so.
Spencer presided over the nearly six-week trial that ended Sept. 4 when the jury convicted Bob McDonnell on 11 counts and his wife, Maureen, on nine. The McDonnells were convicted of accepting more than $165,000 in gifts and loans from former Star Scientific Inc. CEO Jonnie Williams in exchange for promoting his company's dietary supplements.
Following the trial, McDonnell asked to be acquitted or granted a new trial because they contended prosecutors failed to prove they performed any "official acts" on behalf of Williams. On Thursday, his attorneys expanded on their argument.
"Even before Mr. McDonnell was indicted, opinion-makers in the media already convicted him," McDonnell's attorneys wrote.
The defense attorneys said Spencer's decision to deny their request to interview each of the approximately 150 potential jurors individually merits a new trial.
Juror Louis DeNitto was dismissed during the trial after his lawyer, James Watson, called prosecutors and said DeNitto had called Watson to discuss the case and indicated that the other jurors may have discussed the case, according to McDonnell's lawyers. After interviewing DeNitto and Watson, Spencer dismissed DeNitto but did not interview each remaining juror about whether they had improperly begun discussing the case.
Bob McDonnell's sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 6. Maureen McDonnell's is Feb. 20.
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Judge denies Robert McDonnell’s request for a new trial
By Matt Zapotosky
A federal judge on Monday rejected a bid from former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, for a new trial or outright acquittal on public corruption charges — although, in a surprise move, he threw out the former first lady’s conviction for obstruction of justice.
The rulings from U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer were largely expected and, even with the obstruction count vacated, the McDonnells are still facing significant prison time. The couple can — and very likely will — raise the same issues on appeal, but that won’t come until after they are sentenced early next year.
Still, Spencer’s unexpected dismissal of the obstruction charge against Maureen McDonnell is undeniably a win for her defense team, and it leaves the former first lady convicted of just eight counts of public corruption to her husband’s 11. The judge ruled, essentially, that prosecutors did not prove that Maureen McDonnell intended to obstruct a grand jury — even if she took steps that might have thrown off an investigation.
The McDonnells were convicted in September of public corruption after a jury decided unanimously that they lent the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. The McDonnells argued soon after that the guilty verdicts stemmed from “insufficient evidence” and “numerous legal errors during the proceedings” and asked Spencer to throw out their convictions — or at least order that they be given a new trial.
Prosecutors resisted their efforts, saying the proceedings were fair.
As he has in the past, Spencer largely agreed with prosecutors — especially with regard to the jury’s conclusion that the McDonnells either performed or promised to perform “official acts” in exchange for gifts from Williams. The notion of “official acts” had been a key point of contention at the trial, as defense attorneys had argued the governor and his wife did not perform or promise to perform them, and that Spencer erred in the way he defined the term for jurors.
Spencer wrote that prosecutors, as they were required to do, showed that McDonnell “attempted to use his gubernatorial position to influence governmental decisions” and had demonstrated a connection between gifts he received and actions he took. He wrote that prosecutors produced “substantial evidence” that the governor knew Williams wanted state-funded studies of his dietary supplement, Anatabloc, and they highlighted “specific actions” McDonnell took to help obtain those studies.
“The alleged exchange in this case was not simply receiving things of value in return for official action in the abstract,” Spencer wrote. “McDonnell fails to account for the permissible inferences the jury may have drawn with regards to the timing of Williams’s gifts and McDonnell’s official actions.”
On Maureen McDonnell’s obstruction conviction, though, Spencer did something of an about-face, granting a request from defense attorneys that he had previously rejected.
The issue is deep in the legal weeds of the case. Prosecutors had alleged that Maureen McDonnell obstructed a grand jury investigation when she sent a note to Williams insinuating that she had always intended to return high-end clothing he had purchased for her on a New York City shopping trip. The jury convicted her on that count.
Spencer wrote that although the note “undoubtedly attempted to mislead authorities,” prosecutors had not demonstrated Maureen McDonnell knew for certain it would be passed along to the grand jury. The note alone was not enough to prove obstruction, he wrote.
“Although Mrs. McDonnell may have hoped that the misleading note would be provided to the future grand jury, there is insufficient evidence to enable a rational trier of fact to conclude that Mrs. McDonnell knew this would happen,” the judge wrote. “There was no evidence adduced at trial to show that she was aware of either the existence or possibility of the specific grand jury proceeding referenced in the indictment. Indeed, according to testimony from the Government’s own witness, Special Agent Charles Hagan, there was no federal grand jury investigation into the McDonnells at the time the charged conduct occurred.”
Prosecutors could appeal the judge’s ruling, although it is unclear if they will do so. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment Monday. William Burck, Maureen McDonnell’s defense attorney, declined to comment, as did Hank Asbill, one of Robert McDonnell’s defense attorneys.
Defense attorneys also pursued myriad other avenues in their attempt to convince Spencer the trial he managed was improper, and the judge rejected them at each turn. They argued, for example, that pretrial publicity prevented a fair trial, and that prospective jurors were not questioned extensively enough before the proceedings began. They also argued that Spencer should have questioned every juror after one of them called a lawyer, mentioned the case and made a comment about 12 people “all over the place.”
Robert McDonnell is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 6; his wife, Feb. 20.
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98% of the post on this thread is from GayBBM.
I only posted to state what should be the obvious to the OP which is that NO ONE CARES.
Hope this helps.
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98% of the post on this thread is from GayBBM.
I only posted to state what should be the obvious to the OP which is that NO ONE CARES.
Hope this helps.
So, you decided to click on this thread and post in it only to tell us that you don't care about its contents? No doubt a productive use of your time and symptomatic of the choices you make in life. Stop making a fool of yourself. ::)
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Early federal sentencing recommendation for McDonnell: At least 10 years in prison
By Matt Zapotosky
The federal agency that will play a pivotal role in guiding the sentence of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has recommended that the onetime Republican rising star spend at least 10 years and a month in prison, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The guidelines recommended by the U.S. probation office are preliminary, and even if finalized, U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer is not required to follow them. But experts said that Spencer typically heeds the probation office’s advice, and judges in his district have imposed sentences within the recommendations more than 70 percent of the time in recent years.
“It’s of critical importance,” said Scott Fredericksen, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer. “The fact is, the vast majority of times, courts follow those recommendations closely.”
The matter is far from settled. The probation office recommended a punishment from 10 years and a month to 12 years and 7 months. Calculating an appropriate range of sentences in the federal system is a complicated, mathematical process that takes into account a variety of factors, including the type of crime, the defendant’s role and the amount of loss. The judge has yet to see the arguments from each side.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted in September of lending the prestige of his office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury items.
McDonnell is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 6. His wife’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 20, and her guideline range is expected to be lower than her husband’s. The probation office has not yet filed a report concerning her.
It is unclear how the probation office determined that the former governor’s crimes necessitate a minimum decade-long sentence. The initial report on the matter is sealed, and people familiar with its contents revealed only the recommended range to The Washington Post.
The range is particularly notable because last December, prosecutors offered to let McDonnell plead guilty to just one count of lying to a bank as part of an agreement that would have meant he could be sentenced to three years in prison at the most and probation at the least. Importantly, though, McDonnell would have been required to sign a statement acknowledging that he helped Star Scientific, Williams’s dietary-supplement company, at the same time the businessman was giving him loot, fully shouldering blame for a relationship he has insisted was not criminal and was driven largely by his wife.
A federal probation official in Richmond, U.S. Attorney Dana Boente and a McDonnell defense attorney all declined to comment for this article.
White-collar criminal defense lawyer Matthew Kaiser said that McDonnell’s range was likely increased because he was a high-ranking public official, because he took more than one payment from Williams and because the total value of the gifts he received was so high. Kaiser said the probation officer also likely faulted McDonnell because his testimony stood counter to the jury’s verdict.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys will still have an opportunity to argue to the probation officer about whether the range was correctly calculated — although Kaiser said the probation office often “sticks to its guns.” After that, both sides can try to persuade Spencer to modify the recommended range.
Even then, Spencer is not bound by the guideline. Defense attorneys have already begun working vigorously in their bid to sway him toward leniency. This week, they won a legal skirmish with prosecutors so they can file additional pages in their sentencing memorandum — a key document outlining the sentence they believe McDonnell should receive and why.
It is unclear whether their efforts to move Spencer away from the probation office’s recommended range will be fruitful.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, where McDonnell is being sentenced, judges imposed sentences within the guideline range more than 70 percent of the time last fiscal year, according to data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. In about 21 percent of cases, they imposed sentences below the guideline range without a request from prosecutors to do so.
Nationally, judges imposed sentences within the guideline range about 51 percent of the time last fiscal year and deviated downward without a request from prosecutors to do so in about 19 percent of cases.
In the McDonnell case, prosecutors are not expected to ask for a sentence below the guideline range.
White-collar criminal defense lawyer Jacob Frenkel said that Spencer might vary from the guidelines in McDonnell’s case — taking into account, particularly, the good he has done for Virginians — but is unlikely to apply “the extent of the discretion the defendants would hope for.”
Brian Whisler, a defense lawyer who used to work as a federal prosecutor in Richmond, said that Spencer is known to be “largely deferential to the probation office and its sentencing calculations.” Whisler — whose firm, Baker & McKenzie LLP, represented state employees in the McDonnell case — said the judge will likely draw on other cases in the district to inform his conclusion.
The outcome of those might not be to McDonnell’s liking. In 2011, another federal judge in Richmond sentenced former Virginia delegate Phillip A. Hamilton to 91/2 years in prison in a bribery and extortion case. In 2009, a federal judge in Alexandria sentenced former congressman William J. Jefferson to 13 years in prison for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes — though, notably, that fell well short of the recommended range of 27 to 33 years.
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Bob McDonnell’s Son Charged With DWI in Va. Beach
The former governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell is still in legal trouble and now one of his sons is in trouble after being arrested and charged with DWI early Thursday morning, police say.
Virginia Beach police say on Thursday, Dec. 18, around 3:25 a.m., Robert Ryan McDonnell, 23, was pulled over and arrested in Sandbridge at the 2500 block of Sandpiper Road.
Police say 23-year-old Robert Ryan McDonnell was arrested in the Sandbridge section of Virginia Beach early Thursday morning. Police say he refused a breath test and is not currently in custody.
Police say he lives in Glen Allen, a suburb of Richmond.
There is still no word on his bond status.
Last year, McDonnell’s other son, Sean McDonnell, was found guilty of public intoxication in Charlottesville near the University of Virginia.
McDonnell’s father has a sentencing scheduled for January 6 after he was convicted on several federal corruption charges. Sentencing guidelines call for him to be in prison for approximately 10-12 1/2 years. Bob’s wife Maureen will also be sentenced on February 20th.
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McDonnell’s attorneys will seek public service for former Va. governor
By Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind S. Helderman December 23 at 2:36 PM
Defense attorneys for former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell asked a judge in a court filing on Tuesday to sentence the disgraced ex-politico to work 6,000 hours of community service instead of serving any prison time for his public corruption convictions.
The court filing in federal district court in Richmond — the substance of which was first reported by the Richmond Times Dispatch — is a long shot request, to say the least. The U.S. probation office, whose calculation goes a long way to shaping sentences in the federal system, has recommended McDonnell spend somewhere between 10 years and a month and 12 years and seven months behind bars.
But McDonnell’s defense team urged U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer to reject that calculation as “patently unfair,” arguing that no public official had been convicted for similar conduct and what McDonnell did was a a “total aberration in what was by all accounts a successful and honorable career.”
“[A] variant sentence of probation with full-time, rigorous community service of 6,000 hours best serves the goals of justice, fairness, and mercy in this case,” defense attorneys wrote.
As of about 2:30 p.m., prosecutors had yet to make their own sentencing recommendation to Spencer, though they are expected to do so later Tuesday and ask for a term within the probation office’s recommended range.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted in September of public corruption for lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. The former governor is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 5, and his wife is scheduled to be sentenced on February 20.
The probation office has not yet made a recommendation in Maureen McDonnell’s case, and prosecutors and defense attorneys are not required to take formal positions on the matter until next month.
Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who now does white collar criminal defense work, said Spencer is highly unlikely to sentence McDonnell to only a few years of community service, but is unsurprising that his attorneys would request such a penalty. Frenkel said that at a minimum, Spencer will want his sentence to steer other politicians away from public corruption, and a term of mere probation would probably not send the message he intends.
“At the end of the football game, the quarterback will always throw the Hail Mary with the hope that it will be caught in the end zone,” Frenkel said. “Is it realistic? ... Not really, because, again, one of the fundamental criteria for a sentencing judge is the deterrent effect of the sentence.”
According to people familiar with the case, McDonnell’s defense attorneys believe the probation office should have recommended the former governor face a guideline sentencing range of two years and nine months to three years and five months. Their filing Tuesday, though, asked Spencer to go below that and impose no actual time behind bars.
In the filing, McDonnell’s defense attorneys proposed a number of specific organizations for which the former governor could work — free of charge — if the judge were to sentence him to community service. Among them are Operation Blessing International, a humanitarian organization based in Virginia Beach and the Catholic Diocese of Richmond.
Frenkel said that is important because the governor’s best chance for success is to show the court a concrete plan that could serve as a substitute for prison.
“So rather than simply say, ‘put him on probation and give him community service,’ they are trying to line up a very methodical, organized plan to serve as an alternative to incarceration,” Frenkel said.
Notably, the organizations and their leaders bear personal and professional connections to McDonnell, and some might view a sentence that sent him to work for them as hardly a sentence at all.
Operation Blessing, for example, was founded by Virginia Beach televangelist Pat Robertson, and he continues to sit on the organization’s board of directors. The controversial religious leader has been a longtime friend and political ally of McDonnell. McDonnell received a graduate degree from what is now called Regent University, the Christian-based college founded by Robertson.
Robertson also donated more than $100,000 to McDonnell’s political campaigns and attended his 2010 inauguration as governor. On his program in August, Robertson accused the Department of Justice of pursuing a political prosecution of McDonnell, claiming Attorney General Eric Holder was “behind all this stuff.”
“It’s one more reason why this administration is just destroying this nation and destroying its own credibility,” Robertson said.
Frenkel said that while he does not expect a sentence of only community service, he also doubts Spencer will impose a sentence of more than a decade. Such a term could be painful for McDonnell in more ways than one.
Federal bureau of prison procedures call for any male inmate with more than a decade left on his sentence to serve time in a low security prison — as opposed to a minimum security facility — unless a specific waiver is given. Minimum security prisons come with limited or no fencing, fewer guards and dormitory housing. Low security prisons come with double fenced perimeters and many more guards.
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Former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell’s downfall is wife’s fault, daughter says
By Justin Jouvenal and Rachel Weiner
One of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s daughters says his stunning downfall and conviction on public corruption charges can largely be attributed to the corrosive effects of just one person: her mother.
Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky wrote in a blunt letter to a federal judge that it was former first lady Maureen McDonnell’s materialism and mental-health issues that derailed the rising political career of her husband. The letter of support for Robert McDonnell was part of a trove of 440 submitted by his attorneys, who are seeking leniency at his Jan. 6 sentencing in Richmond.
“My mom . . . has always been concerned about getting discounts or freebees,” McDonnell Zubowsky wrote. “She hid her coordination with people for free or discounted things or services and she didn’t communicate with my dad because she knew he would not approve. . . . The testimony about my mom was not just part of a defense strategy and was not an attempt to ‘throw her under the bus,’ but unfortunately, was the reality.”
In their letters, McDonnell Zubowsky and another daughter, Cailin Young, also echoed themes that emerged at Robert McDonnell’s trial this summer, saying their father was an upstanding and religious man, who was privately struggling with a crumbling marriage. Robert and Maureen McDonnell were convicted in September of using the prestige of the governor’s office to promote the company of nutritional supplement chief executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for lavish gifts and loans.
The McDonnell children said their parents rarely communicated because their relationship was so strained. McDonnell Zubowsky wrote that she believed her mother had mental-health problems for years and her father planned to address the issues after he left office. She wrote that her mother was lonely as her father’s political career took off and she sought solace in material things. She also asked the judge to spare Robert McDonnell prison time because she is scheduled to give birth to his first grandchild in January.
Cailin Young wrote that it was incredibly painful to see intimate details about her parents’ troubled private life splashed across TV and newspapers daily during the trial. She and other family members said the public humiliation and trauma of the conviction had shattered their lives and that they would have a difficult time if he were imprisoned.
“My Father is the heart and soul of our family and we will be lost without him,” Young wrote. Her husband, Christopher Young, added that “the mere thought of life without him is so heartbreaking that I cannot even believe it to be possible.”
McDonnell’s sister also took aim at Maureen McDonnell, writing in a letter that “some of his wife’s actions have been unilateral and have blindsided Bob and his family.”
The private pain and turmoil described by some of Robert McDonnell’s closest family members contrasts sharply with the public figure that emerges in the hundreds of other letters submitted by the defense. From major policy initiatives to small kindnesses, the former Republican governor is described as a dedicated and tireless public servant, a principled prosecutor and compassionate boss. Those submitting letters of support to the court include some high-profile names, like former House leader Eric Cantor, preacher Pat Robertson and Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.).
But there are also letters from a legion of state legislators, staffers, donors, former professors, acquaintances of McDonnell’s children and friends from high school and college. Anecdotes abound: McDonnell organized a fundraiser for a professor with cancer in law school, he paid a constituent’s rent, he visited a stranger in the hospital and comforted a low-level staffer from Newtown, Conn., following the mass shooting there.
A story related by Martin D. Brown, a former adviser to the governor on prisoner reentry issues, was typical. Brown wrote he staged a father-daughter dance at the Richmond City Jail in 2013 for the inmates. Brown wrote McDonnell not only came to the event, but brought his own daughter and stayed for the entire dance. Afterward, he spoke to a group of prisoners about their prospects after incarceration.
“The Bob McDonnell I witnessed countless times, time and time again was a man of great compassion who could relate as comfortably with a ‘tatted up’ prisoner, welfare mother or child in need of adoption, as with a member of the General Assembly or dignitary,” Brown wrote.
Many suggested McDonnell could not have knowingly taken a bribe, and some recounted stories of how he sacrificed more lucrative jobs and career paths to pursue the public good. One relayed how McDonnell turned down a position as a “rain maker” for a law firm because McDonnell didn’t feel there was enough actual work involved.
“I do not know the Governor McDonnell who bargains campaign contributions and friendship for personal favors and still to this day do not believe that Bob McDonnell exists,” wrote Bruce Thompson, a major Virginia Beach developer and McDonnell financial supporter.
McDonnell’s attorneys are pushing for U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer to sentence their client to community service, but federal prosecutors have argued that a probation officer’s recommendation of more than 10 years in prison is a more appropriate sentence.
Supporters wrote in the letters of support they were saddened, perplexed — and even bewildered in some cases — at what had befallen McDonnell. Lawyers for both Robert and Maureen McDonnell declined to comment for this story.
“The greatest tragedy in all of this is the decades of honorable work, selfless dedication to the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the goodness of the McDonnell family is diminished,” said Maureen Clancy, a friend of the family. “It breaks my heart and the heart of countless people like me honored to call Bob and Maureen friends.”
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You're obsessed over the irrelevance of this guy/story. lol
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You're obsessed over the irrelevance of this guy/story. lol
Stop making a fool of yourself!
One can be “obsessed” with McDonnell or he can be “irrelevant” but “obsessed over the irrelevance” does not make any sense--at least not in English. Please pass a class in rhetoric and composition before you come knocking on my door. If English is not your first language you are almost forgiven. ::)
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Stop making a fool of yourself!
One can be “obsessed” with McDonnell or he can be “irrelevant” but “obsessed over the irrelevance” does not make any sense--at least not in English. Please pass a class in rhetoric and composition before you come knocking on my door. If English is not your first language you are almost forgiven. ::)
Did I strike a nerve over the irrelevance of your obsession with this story? Haha
Bottom line is no one cares about this piss ant.
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You can be obsessed by something irrelevant if you're the only one obsessed....
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What to expect at former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell’s sentencing
By Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind S. Helderman
A federal judge in Richmond will decide on Tuesday what punishment former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell deserves for trading the influence of his office to a smooth-talking businessman in exchange for sweetheart loans, lavish vacations and a variety of other loot.
The decision will not be a simple one.
U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer will have to answer technical, legal, even mathematical questions. How much were the loans, vacations and luxury goods that McDonnell received from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. actually worth? Should the swag be treated as multiple bribes or lumped together?
He will have to weigh sweeping, personal, almost intangible considerations. How serious was McDonnell’s public corruption? What penalty might deter others in his shoes?
The answers that Spencer comes up with will ultimately determine what penalty would amount to justice for the first Virginia governor ever to be convicted of a crime. Prosecutors want McDonnell to spend at least 10 years and a month in prison. The former governor’s defense attorneys believe a sentence of community service — and no time behind bars — would be sufficient.
Both sides will make their best pitches to the judge in person beginning at 10 a.m. The defense’s will probably include a personal plea from McDonnell and perhaps from some of his supporters; Spencer already has been given 440 letters that friends, family members and others wrote on the governor’s behalf, urging leniency and extolling the virtues of the onetime Republican rising star.
Spencer also has reviewed filings from prosecutors, who have attacked McDonnell as a man who feels no remorse and is still seeking to blame others.
McDonnell will not likely spend Tuesday night behind bars, as nonviolent offenders in white collar cases are generally given a date to report to prison on their own. His attorneys on Monday asked that he be allowed to keep his freedom until his appeals are adjudicated.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted in September of public corruption for lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Williams in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. Maureen McDonnell is being sentenced separately from her husband in a proceeding scheduled for Feb. 20. Henry Asbill, one of McDonnell’s defense attorneys, and U.S. Attorney Dana Boente declined to comment for this story.
The starting point for determining the former governor’s punishment is this: The U.S. probation office — the federal agency tasked with calculating a range of appropriate penalties according to the federal sentencing guidelines — has recommended in a report that McDonnell face somewhere between 10 years and a month to 12 years and seven months in prison. There is no parole in the federal system, and if McDonnell were to be incarcerated, he would only be able to reduce his actual time behind bars with good behavior by 54 days per year, at most.
Spencer is not bound by the probation office’s guideline recommendation — it is merely a technical calculation of how the office believes federal sentencing guidelines should be applied in the case — but experts say he typically heeds its advice. Prosecutors hope he does so again. They argued in court filings that they believe the guideline range was properly calculated, and that Spencer should impose a prison term within it.
McDonnell’s defense attorneys countered that the probation office misstated some facts of the case and misinterpreted the law. They argued in court filings that the sentencing guideline range should have been calculated as two years and nine months to three years and five months. And they urged Spencer to impose a penalty even lower than that.
Spencer will have to settle both matters, determining if the recommended range should be less severe and if the sentence he imposes should fall inside of it.
The first question is largely a technical one. The probation office increased the range of recommended penalties for McDonnell because — in the estimation of a probation officer — the former governor received multiple bribes and those bribes totaled more than $120,000. The probation office also penalized McDonnell for obstructing justice during his testimony at trial, and it did not give him credit for accepting responsibility in the case.
In court filings, defense attorneys argued the probation office’s valuation of what the former governor received from Williams was too high, saying McDonnell should not have been assessed the full, face value of $120,000 in loans that were ultimately paid back. Defense attorneys also argued that while McDonnell might have received more than one payment, those payments stemmed from “only a single incident of bribery.”
Defense attorneys wrote that McDonnell did not obstruct justice when he testified on his own behalf, saying the former governor actually acknowledged many of prosecutors’ factual allegations but disputed that his conduct was illegal. They argued McDonnell deserved credit, instead, for accepting responsibility in the case.
Prosecutors disputed all of those points. They noted that Williams’s loans came with terms that were “so staggeringly bare that they barely constituted loans at all,” and they said McDonnell went to Williams repeatedly to solicit loans or bribes. They also detailed eight instances they believe showed McDonnell lying on the witness stand and said that any remorse McDonnell showed “centers on the fact that he was caught, rather than acknowledgment and responsibility for his criminal conduct.”
After Spencer determines the guideline range, he will weigh entirely different factors as he fashions what he considers an appropriate punishment. Among those that prosecutors and defense attorneys highlighted in McDonnell’s case: the nature and circumstances of his offenses, McDonnell’s personal history and characteristics and the need to deter others from ending up in similar straits.
Their views could hardly be more divergent.
Defense attorneys urged Spencer to consider all the good the former governor had done before his conviction. They attacked the charges against McDonnell and asserted that the former governor’s trial was so public and painful that it would itself deter others from making similar mistakes.
The attorneys asked that McDonnell be sentenced to 6,000 hours of community service, even suggesting specific assignments that might be appropriate.
Prosecutors shot back that the former governor’s illustrious career and advanced education only made him “especially qualified to understand the gravity of his crimes.” They urged Spencer to send a message with his sentence, writing that leniency “could easily lead other public officials to believe that the potential benefits of corruption outweigh the costs.”
A former prosecutor and JAG officer, Spencer was appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Known as a no-nonsense and efficient jurist, he took senior status on the bench last year, meaning he is now semi-retired.
Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who now does white collar criminal defense work, said Spencer probably will not impose a decade-long sentence, but defense attorneys’ bid for only probation is something of a “Hail Mary.”
Since his September conviction, McDonnell has been leaning on friends and family as he prepared for Tuesday’s hearing. Prosecutors have also revealed that he has a consulting contract that pays him $7,500 a month.
The owner of a Virginia Beach company that does plumbing and HVAC in major construction companies confirmed that his company gave McDonnell the contract after the trial. Rod Rodriquez, the owner of Bay Mechanical Inc., said McDonnell has been working two to three days a week, doing sales calls and otherwise helping the company expand its client base.
Rodriguez, who has not previously donated to McDonnell’s campaigns, said he has been a friend for many years. “I just think the world of him and whatever I can do to help, if I can afford it, I’ll be there,” he said.
In addition to the complex legal arguments, Tuesday’s hearing could hold some drama. McDonnell himself will likely address the court, asking for leniency on his own behalf. And the defense may present other witnesses to speak on his behalf. Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder (D) said he’s been asked to be prepared to potentially address the court.
If Spencer sentences McDonnell to prison, it will be up to the judge to decide how quickly McDonnell must report. On Monday, his attorneys formally asked that he be allowed to remain free on bond during his sure-to-be-lengthy appeals. They argued that their appeals will raise “substantive legal questions” that would overturn the conviction or result in a new trial if the appellate court decides in McDonnell’s favor, particularly about whether the former ever performed “official acts” for Williams in exchange for his largesse. And they noted other instances in which officials convicted of corruption have been allowed bond.
Where McDonnell is sent to prison — if he is sent to prison at all — will depend on how officials classify his security level, what facilities have beds available and perhaps even his status as a high-profile inmate, said Cheri Nolan, the managing director of Federal Prison Consultants, an organization that helps people navigate the U.S. prison system.
McDonnell might not be automatically bound for minimum security: Bureau of Prisons policies call for inmates with more than 10 years left on their sentences to be housed in low-security facilities, which have double-fenced perimeters and more guards. Prison officials could waive that requirement, but Nolan said such deviations are uncommon.
If he is permitted to voluntarily surrender, McDonnell would be allowed to bring with him little more than his wedding band and prescription glasses, Nolan said. If he is turned over to the U.S. Marshals immediately, he might be handing personal effects off to family members in the courtroom.
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As sentencing approaches, McDonnell leans on his friends and faith
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Matt Zapotosky
About a month after his corruption conviction, former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell paid a quiet visit to the home of an old Alexandria friend.
McDonnell and Liz Reiley had seen each other just once since middle school, yet their emotions poured out as he consoled her over the recent death of her sister, and she comforted him over the unfathomable turn his own life had taken.
“He was suffering,” Reiley recalled of their 90-minute conversation in October. “And I think when you’re suffering, it makes you more sensitive to other people’s suffering.”
In the strange four months of enforced limbo that have separated McDonnell’s shocking guilty verdict from his much-anticipated sentencing Tuesday, the former Republican governor has in some ways presided over an extended wake for his own once-promising political and personal future.
It has been an emotional time for McDonnell, who potentially faces a sentence of a decade or more in prison. Friends and associates say the 60-year-old former governor has struggled to process how 12 Virginians could believe that he is a criminal, selling his office in exchange for $177,000 in loans and luxury gifts and vacations from a dietary supplement company executive.
Friends say he has been downright depressed on some days but more upbeat on others, smiling nostalgically when talking about his time in office, a time when he was popular enough that it was thought he might be planning a presidential campaign this year.
He has jogged with friends to get in shape, grown a beard, and then shaved it.
He has savored time with his adult children, including his daughter, Jeanine, who is pregnant with McDonnell’s first grandchild, due this month. And he has made a particular point of reaching out to people like Reiley, who have suffered recent tragedy.
But he has remained estranged from his wife, Maureen, who was convicted along with him and has been blamed by many close to McDonnell for creating the scandal. After 38 years of marriage, the two left the courthouse separately after September’s verdict and did not speak that night, according to people close to them.
They live apart, with the former governor spending most nights in Virginia Beach or at a church rectory in Richmond. But they came together for the holidays, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with their children at their house in suburban Richmond.
Alongside his grief, McDonnell appears to have also spent the past months going through some of the motions of life as a respected retired governor.
He met with his successor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), whose office confirmed that the two talked for more than an hour in the days just after the verdict, meeting with him at the rectory. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) made a similar visit several weeks later.
He has lent an ear to former staffers, some now forging professional lives for the first time in years outside his orbit, and he took on a consulting contract from a Virginia Beach company that pays $7,500 a month.
He has not hidden from public view, either: He participated in an annual Virginia Beach charity walk that raises money for ALS research, just as he had as governor. And he attended a public Veterans Day ceremony in Richmond, where he told a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he had “great faith in God” and was “doing well.”
His annual pre-Thanksgiving e-mail to his most senior political advisers arrived on schedule, albeit with a particularly somber tone. He thanked the group for supporting him while he has “borne my cross through this long dark walk in the valley.”
“He understands the situation and the gravity of the situation he’s in,” said state Sen. Jeffrey L. McWaters (R-Virginia Beach), a close friend. “But I think he has great hope. Great hope in America, still, in our system of justice. And great hope for what the world has for his future, though he’s clueless on what that will be.”
The McDonnells declined to be interviewed through their attorneys, who also would not comment about the details of their post-conviction life.
But his friends, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could speak more freely about the McDonnells’ private family life, said he remains optimistic about the possibility that his conviction might be overturned on appeal and hopeful that, in the meantime, he might be allowed to remain free on bail. McDonnell’s attorneys have asked that he be allowed to skip prison entirely and be sentenced Tuesday to perform 6,000 hours of community service instead.
Friends say he is nevertheless clear-eyed about the shattering alternative: The probation office has calculated that sentencing guidelines call for him to spend between 10 and 12.5 years in prison. Prosecutors have endorsed that recommendation, and judges in the Eastern District of Virginia accept probation office guidelines in 70 percent of cases.
“How do you prepare for that?” said Joe Damico, a close McDonnell friend from high school. “This is a Boy Scout. This is a guy who I doubt he’s ever had a parking ticket. . . . I don’t think he has any idea what it would be like.”
A prison term of a decade or more would mean that McDonnell would spend much of the remaining useful years of his life behind bars. He would probably miss weddings among the three of his five adult children who have not yet married, as well as the births of additional grandchildren. Damico said McDonnell’s message to his children, however, has been clear: “Don’t let this predicament ruin your lives,” he has told them.
The worst moments for McDonnell, friends said, were the 24 hours right after the verdict. In court, McDonnell had collapsed, sobbing with his head in his hands.
At the rectory just after, he was emotionally devastated.
“I can’t think of much worse, short of having one of your children die,” Damico said.
A turning point came the next day, when a group of his most loyal former staffers — some of whom had been required to testify as witnesses for the prosecution — jointly visited their ex-boss. Over pizza and wine, they recalled funny anecdotes from McDonnell’s campaigns and years in state office. They poked fun at one another. For the first time, McDonnell smiled.
In the weeks since, the detail-oriented former prosecutor has kept himself occupied reviewing filings and discussing legal strategy with his attorneys.
In addition to Reiley, he has become close to the grandfather of a teen who collapsed and died at the end of a half-marathon in Virginia Beach in March and spent time with the husband of Ruthanne Lodato, the Alexandria music teacher who was fatally shot in her home in February.
“He’s really living his life now in ways he didn’t before, and he’s living it like someone who has a new perspective on what’s important in life,” said Janet Vestal Kelly, a close friend who served as secretary of the commonwealth under McDonnell.
Always a deeply religious Catholic, he has turned to faith for comfort, meeting with a prayer group and working closely with the Rev. Wayne Ball, with whom he lives at the Richmond rectory.
“I am so very thankful to God and His Son Jesus for the amazing talented group of ‘apostles’ He chose to work at my side as we served the people,” he wrote to his former staff in November.
McWaters said that McDonnell appears to crave normalcy. A few days after the verdict, the pair laced up their tennis shoes and went for a long run along the shore in Virginia Beach. They bantered, McWaters recalled, long a feature of their friendship.
During another run, he said McDonnell took selfies with a group of high school students.
McDonnell’s business consulting job is in Virginia Beach, so he spends part of each week living in the community he first represented in the House of Delegates.
Prosecutors revealed the consulting contract in a recent court filing; a number of McDonnell’s friends said they either did not know where he is employed or declined to provide the employer’s name.
McDonnell testified during his trial that he had moved out of the Henrico County home he shared with his wife shortly before the proceedings, an attempt to escape his difficult relationship. His attorneys had argued during trial that the marriage was too broken for McDonnell and his wife to conspire to sell his office.
Prosecutors had expressed skepticism, showing jurors pictures of the couple walking into court hand-in-hand for pretrial hearings and noting that the two held a joint 60th birthday party in June.
But people close to them said that these days, the couple speak only from time to time, mostly as they prepare to sell the $835,000 home in Henrico — which they purchased after McDonnell was elected attorney general in 2005 — to help ease financial strain.
Maureen McDonnell was there shortly after the trial, looking on as the former governor hauled some of the furniture from their home out to the street to be picked up by Goodwill as the couple packed up their belongings, Damico said. She is not expected to attend Tuesday’s sentencing.
McDonnell has grappled not just with strains in his marriage but also with a deep split between his wife and other members of his extended family. McDonnell’s sisters, in particular, blame Maureen McDonnell for initiating the family’s relationship with businessman Jonnie R. Williams and then hiding some of Williams’s gifts from their brother.
“It was a slow and most painful drip of the truth about her conduct that was heartbreaking to witness,” McDonnell’s sister, also named Maureen, wrote to the court about revelations of the federal investigation as she asked for leniency in sentencing for her brother.
That view is shared by Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky, the couple’s eldest daughter, who was always closer to her father — following him to the University of Notre Dame and then into the Army.
In the fall, Zubowsky declined to invite her mother to a Virginia Beach baby shower attended by her father, according to two people with knowledge of the party.
A person familiar with her thinking said that Zubowsky’s anger stems from her belief that her mother has never apologized for her role in the scandal. Other members of the family — including Zubowsky, her siblings and the former governor himself — have apologized for taking gifts from Williams.
(Several McDonnell children expressed regret for having accepted luxury items and vacations from Williams in letters written to the court.)
The McDonnells’ other four children have retained ties to their mother. Daughters Rachel and Cailin sat with her after the verdict was delivered; Cailin Young, who lives in Richmond, is helping to solicit letters to be submitted to the judge on Maureen McDonnell’s behalf in advance of her Feb. 20 sentencing.
Williams, the one-time friend whose largesse led to the McDonnells’ downfall, reached a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to escape all prosecution. Although he owns an estate outside of Richmond, his attorney said he and his wife are spending most of their time at his condominium in Florida. The attorney otherwise declined to comment.
In August, Williams severed all ties with Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, the new name of the company he led when it was called Star Scientific.
Williams continues to believe in the promise of anatabine, the tobacco-based chemical that the jury found he sought to study at Virginia universities with McDonnell’s assistance.
Two people who are familiar with Williams’s activities say he is exploring a new business venture: anatabine-filled e-cigarettes.
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the Bubbas are gonna be fightin' over his white boi butt.
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Stop making a fool of yourself!
One can be “obsessed” with McDonnell or he can be “irrelevant” but “obsessed over the irrelevance” does not make any sense--at least not in English. Please pass a class in rhetoric and composition before you come knocking on my door. If English is not your first language you are almost forgiven. ::)
LOL
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A study in how greed kills brain cells (just like testosterone). You live in the governor's mansion for free. You make $175k a year. You have a driver and probably a cook. You fly for free. You'll have a golden parachute when you leave office. You'll be able to "write" books, get paid to read speeches and sit on boards. You'll never have to work a 9-5 again.
And this isn't enough? Pretty sad.
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the Bubbas are gonna be fightin' over his white boi butt.
Doubtful. But some time in the can will do him good. It is deserved. Supports say "his talents will be wasted in prison." Not sure that argument makes any sense: everyone’s talent and potential is wasted in prison so why is he special? Wasted talent is not a cause to get out of jail. Will be interesting to see what sentence his wife gets.
Bah!
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This thread shows an interesting process as it plays out. So yeah, a person should care to see it.
That this guy was once a prosecutor makes it all the more something. Maybe he thought he was above it all.
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Robert McDonnell’s incredible shrinking prison sentence: How did judge get there?
By Robert McCartney
RICHMOND — Thanks to an unexpectedly sympathetic federal judge, Bob McDonnell benefited Tuesday from what might be called the Incredible Shrinking Prison Sentence.
When the former Virginia governor walked into the federal courthouse in the morning, he was looking at 10 to 12 years behind bars for corruption, as recommended by the probation office.
By lunchtime, U.S. District Judge James Spencer had cut the range to 6 1/2 to eight years. When he pronounced sentence in the afternoon, the judge gave McDonnell just two.
Spencer’s lenience surprised practically everyone, because the judge had seemed hostile to McDonnell and his attorneys during the trial. So why did he end up where he did?
A cynic might say there’s a lesson here for future felons: If you’re a religious person who served as an Army officer, it helps to have your sentence fixed by a religious judge who also served as an Army officer.
There’s some truth in that, but there’s more to it.
For one thing, Spencer gave McDonnell credit for many years of selfless public service, not only in elected office but also in private, charitable acts.
The judge said he was impressed with the 440 letters he received from McDonnell supporters. They described a man with an upstanding record before his sleazy dealings with businessman Jonnie Williams Sr.
“The overall view that I got from these letters: That he is a good and decent man, has done a lot of good during his time in the public arena,” Spencer said.
This was the right call. Even if you agree with the jury, as I do, that McDonnell acted corruptly, his good deeds merit recognition.
In addition, Spencer hinted that he thought that McDonnell’s crimes weren’t as odious as the prosecution claimed.
In a somewhat cryptic comment, the judge sharply faulted federal sentencing guidelines calling for a sentence of seven or eight years in prison for McDonnell’s 11 felony convictions.
“That would be unfair. It would be ridiculous under these facts,” Spencer said.
The judge didn’t identify the “facts” to which he referred. But there were signs he sympathized with McDonnell’s insistence that he was less a conscious conspirator than someone who made some bad decisions under pressures from work and from his wife, Maureen, who was also convicted.
For instance, the judge singled out as “especially thoughtful” a letter he received from Janet Kelly, who served in McDonnell’s Cabinet as secretary of the commonwealth.
The letter stressed that McDonnell, as governor, was working 18 to 20 hours a day, so he did not have “the luxury of pre-meditation of intentionally thinking through much of anything related to his personal life.”
Kelly also wrote that even after 38 years of marriage, McDonnell “has a deep-seated inability to adequately know how to handle his wife’s behavior.”
Spencer was clear as could be that he rewarded McDonnell for his 15 years of active military service.
The judge, who served as an Army captain for three years, said he had “great respect” for veterans, adding: “Anybody who knows me knows that’s one of my weak spots.”
Spencer, who has a master of divinity degree from Howard University, also seemed receptive to religious appeals from McDonnell and his supporters.
In explaining his thinking about the sentence, the judge made references to the Garden of Eden, Pontius Pilate and the River Jordan. He praised a letter he received from the Rev. Wayne Ball, a Roman Catholic priest with whom McDonnell is living.
The letter appealed to Spencer to look at McDonnell “from the spiritual side.” The priest wrote, “You or I may have looked at Jonnie Williams and from a mile away said, ‘snake oil salesman.’ Bob would have said we were being un-Christian.”
McDonnell, in his final plea to the judge, said, “I acknowledge that I am a sinner with many, many human frailties.” He said at the end he trusted in “the providence and protection of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now, none of this means Spencer necessarily thought McDonnell was innocent or had somehow been wrongfully prosecuted. He went to considerable lengths to say the former governor received a fair trial and benefited from a vigorous defense.
It would be a travesty if Virginia legislators used the light sentence to slow the effort to tighten laws against gifts to politicians so this kind of scandal doesn’t happen again.
But the judge’s decision does show the system sometimes hits a sweet spot where mercy tempers justice. Just as it should.
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McDonnell asks higher court to let him stay out of prison while appeal is pending
By Matt Zapotosky
Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to let him stay out of prison while his appeal is pending, and requested that the matter be decided quickly, given that he is scheduled to be behind bars in less than a month.
As his attorneys had promised, McDonnell (R) filed a motion with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals asking for a bond pending an appeal — in the hopes that the higher level judges will look on his arguments more favorably than U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer, who turned down the same request on Tuesday.
McDonnell also asked the appeals court to require expedited briefing on the matter — noting he is supposed to report to prison by Feb. 9 and begin serving his two-year sentence. If the court needed more time, McDonnell suggested it could also put that date on hold.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted in September of lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods, and McDonnell was formally sentenced this month. His wife is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 20 and remains free.
In his request to the court of appeals, McDonnell made the same arguments that he has previously. He asserted that he performed no “official” acts for Williams — a point prosecutors were required to prove — and claimed jurors were wrongly instructed on the matter. He also alleged Spencer did not question prospective jurors enough about pre-trial publicity in the case.
McDonnell must convince the appeals court that the questions it must decide are “substantial” ones, and if the case goes in his favor, he will likely be acquitted or given a new trial. His attorney pressed those points stridently, claiming that McDonnell’s case was something of a historical first and that it would “revolutionize politics by dramatically expanding the general federal corruption laws” if it were allowed to stand.
The former governor also, curiously, used Spencer’s own comments at sentencing to bolster his pitch to the appeals court, noting the judge said it would be “ridiculous under these facts” to send McDonnell to prison for seven or eight years.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the appeals court had yet to rule on McDonnell’s request. The former governor’s attorneys requested to be able to present oral arguments on the matter and noted the court would be in session for such arguments from Jan. 27 to 29.
Prosecutors were instructed to respond to the motion by Jan. 21.
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“You or I may have looked at Jonnie Williams and from a mile away said, ‘snake oil salesman.’ Bob would have said we were being un-Christian.”
...and...?
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Maureen McDonnell sentencing guidelines call for 5 to 6.5 years in prison
By Matt Zapotosky
The U.S. probation office has determined that federal sentencing guidelines call for former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell to spend as long as 6 1/2 years in prison — a stiff term that she is unlikely to receive but one that will nonetheless serve to guide the judge deciding her fate.
In a sealed report given to prosecutors and defense attorneys last week, the probation office wrote that it had calculated McDonnell’s so-called guideline range as 63 to 78 months — roughly 5 to 6 1/2 years in prison. Two people familiar with the report’s contents described the range on the condition of anonymity because the matter has not been made public.
U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer is required to consider that range as he sentences the former first lady Feb. 20, although he is not bound to follow it. This month, Spencer sentenced former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, Maureen McDonnell’s husband, to just two years in prison, despite an initial recommendation from the probation office that the onetime Republican rising star spend at least 10 years and a month in prison.
Legal experts have said Maureen McDonnell’s sentence is likely to be less than her husband’s, given that the former first lady was not considered a public official and was found guilty of three fewer public corruption counts.
Defense attorneys for Robert and Maureen McDonnell, U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente and a federal probation official in Richmond declined to comment for this article.
The McDonnells were convicted in September of lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, gifts and luxury goods. In the federal system, determining an appropriate punishment for those crimes is a complicated process that combines technical calculations (such as the value of what they received from Williams) with more intangible considerations (such as what might deter others in the McDonnells’ shoes).
Calculating the range of the federal sentencing guidelines is the first step in the process, requiring the U.S. probation office to look at the circumstances of the case and other factors to come up with an objective, mathematical recommendation for what penalty Maureen McDonnell should face. The recommendation is only an initial figure: prosecutors and defense attorneys still can try to convince the probation officer to change the range, and they can eventually take any concerns they have to Spencer himself.
Ultimately, Spencer will decide what range the guidelines recommend and whether he wants to follow that recommendation at all.
It is not clear, precisely, how the probation office determined that Maureen McDonnell should spend as long as 6 1/2 years in prison. Those who described the report to The Washington Post did not provide such details. But her husband’s guidelines might be instructive.
The probation office had initially determined that Robert McDonnell received more than $121,000 worth of benefits from Williams — a value that considerably enhanced the guideline range for his sentence — although Spencer said the probation office should have calculated the amount as between $97,000 and $121,000. Spencer also determined — contrary to the probation office’s view — that Robert McDonnell did not obstruct justice in his testimony at the trial and said the guidelines should have called for a prison term between 78 and 97 months, or roughly 6 1/2 to 8 years.
That was significantly less than the probation office’s recommended term of 10 years and a month to 12 years and 7 months
Spencer, of course, gave the former governor a sentence far below what the guidelines called for and spoke at length in court about not being bound to follow those guidelines. At one point, he said a sentence of seven or eight years would be “ridiculous, under these facts.” That was somewhat surprising; judges in the Eastern District of Virginia follow the sentencing guidelines more than 70 percent of the time, and Spencer is known to do so as often as any other judge.
Robert McDonnell’s defense attorneys had asked that the former governor be sentenced to just 6,000 hours of community service. Maureen McDonnell’s attorneys have not yet put together their request to the judge, but they are expected to do so in the coming weeks.
Robert McDonnell is to report to prison Feb. 9 but has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to let him remain free while his appeal is pending. That effort gained two significant supporters Tuesday, when retired federal judge Nancy Gertner and Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. requested to file amicus briefs backing the former governor. Five former Virginia attorneys general and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have made similar requests.
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Stop making a fool of yourself!
One can be “obsessed” with McDonnell or he can be “irrelevant” but “obsessed over the irrelevance” does not make any sense--at least not in English. Please pass a class in rhetoric and composition before you come knocking on my door. If English is not your first language you are almost forgiven. ::)
Come on Bay
you know the only natural talent that Joe has is making a fool of himself
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Come on Bay
you know the only natural talent that Joe has is making a fool of himself
Touché. I have concluded that he is a person of "special needs." :'(
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This thread still going on? Seems the only in America who gives a shit about this is you..lmao.
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This thread still going on? Seems the only in America who gives a shit about this is you..lmao.
funny, I don't recall you ever mentioning that when Bum bumps one of his many favorite threads where he is the primary poster to add yet another post.
why is that?
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funny, I don't recall you ever mentioning that when Bum bumps one of his many favorite threads where he is the primary poster to add yet another post.
why is that?
Probably because it's usually relevant.
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This thread still going on? Seems the only in America who gives a shit about this is you..lmao.
And it seems you still cannot write in complete sentences. I feel sorry for your children. :'(
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Probably because it's usually relevant.
you mean like his 11 page cryfest about liberal censorship where he can't even manage to produce one actual example of censorship?
btw - a governor who once had national ambitions being convicted of corruption and going to jail is a huge story
just imagine this was a democratic governor and I suspect you would have no problem seeing it as relevant
why don't you let the adults have a conversation and you can just stick to posting stupid shit that you got in a chain email and then we'll all point out that you got duped yet again and have a good laugh together
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So far this thread has proven two things :
1 - Faith ain't shit when it comes to getting sentenced.
2 - Joe is still the dumbest poster on this board.
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Prosecutors Ask Appeals Court To Deny Former Governor McDonnell’s Bail
By Emily Satchell
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Federal prosecutors say former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s appeal of his corruption convictions doesn’t present any arguments strong enough to warrant allowing him to remain free on bail.
Federal prosecutors say that former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s appeal of his public corruption convictions doesn’t present any strong enough arguments to warrant him to remain free on bail.
McDonnell is asking the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a judge’s decision denying bail while he appeals his convictions, the Associated Press reports.
Prosecutors said McDonnell’s claim that the judge defined an “official act” too broadly does not present a question that would result in the reversal of his convictions.
A jury in September 2014 found McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, guilty of accepting more than $165,000 in loans and gifts — including a Rolex watch and designer clothing — in exchange for promoting a nutritional supplement marketed as a miracle cure by Star Scientific Inc. The company’s former CEO, Jonnie Williams, testified under immunity as the prosecution’s star witness.
McDonnell’s attorneys again argued that the appeal could take almost as long as the sentence itself and would raise substantial questions, including whether the government’s interpretation of an “official act” is correct.
Maureen McDonnell, the former governor’s wife, will be sentenced February 20 on eight counts.
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Bob McDonnell's Law License Suspended After Corruption Conviction
By Gary Robertson
RICHMOND, Va., Jan 23 (Reuters) - A disciplinary board of the Virginia State Bar said on Friday it had suspended the law license of former Governor Robert McDonnell after his conviction on 11 felony federal corruption charges.
The state bar cited the felonies as the reason for his disbarment, which is effective Jan. 29.
McDonnell is scheduled to report to prison on Feb. 9 to begin a two-year sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge James Spencer. He has appealed his September conviction, which followed a six-week jury trial, to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The former governor was ordered to appear before the state bar's disciplinary board on Feb. 20 to show cause why his license should not be further suspended or revoked.
But Edward L. Davis of the state bar said McDonnell could petition to have the show-cause hearing postponed pending the outcome of his appeal.
"If he asks for a continuance of a show-cause hearing, he gets it," Davis said.
McDonnell's lead attorney could not be reached for comment, but the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper cited a McDonnell spokesman as saying a request for a continuance would be forthcoming.
McDonnell's wife Maureen, who has been convicted of 9 corruption charges, is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Spencer on Feb. 20, the same day as her husband's show-cause hearing.
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Prosecutors Want Maureen McDonnell Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison
According to court documents obtained Friday by News4, prosecutors recommended former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell spend at least 18 months in prison.
Her husband, former Va. Governor Bob McDonnell, had been sentenced to two years in prison, but will remain free during his appeals process. Court document say based on the decreased sentence her husband received, a similar decrease was applied in turn to Maureen McDonnell.
"Because Mrs. McDonnell was a full participant in a bribery scheme that sold the Governor’s office in exchange for luxury goods and sweetheart loans, many of which she solicited personally, and because she repeatedly attempted to thwart the investigation through false representations, it would be unjust for her not to serve a period of incarceration for her crimes," documents said.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were found guilty last year of accepting more than $165,000 in gifts, trips and loans from wealthy vitamin executive Jonnie Williams in exchange for promoting his products.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Prosecutors-Want-Maureen-McDonnell-Sentenced-to-18-Months-in-Prison-291123441.html
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Ex-Va. first lady gets prison term of a year and a day
By Matt Zapotosky
RICHMOND — Maureen McDonnell was sentenced Friday to a year and a day in federal prison after an emotional, hours-long hearing in which the former first lady of Virginia apologized publicly for the first time since she and her husband were accused of public corruption.
Reading from a prepared statement — her voice breaking — McDonnell acknowledged that she “started a chain of events that would bring embarrassment and pain on us all.” She said she had waited for the day when she could break her silence and asked U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer for mercy.
“Your honor, the cry of my heart is that I am sorry,” she said. “I blame no one but myself.”
Afterward, McDonnell embraced her husband, former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R), and he kissed her on the cheek. They left the courthouse separately; she made no comments, while he continued to assert their innocence.
“Sometimes juries get it wrong, and I believe with all my heart that the jury got it wrong in this case,” he said. “I look forward to aggressively pursuing this appeal.”
The McDonnells, both 60, were found guilty last year of conspiring to promote businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s dietary supplement in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. The case marked the first time in history a former Virginia governor or first lady was convicted of a crime.
Robert McDonnell was sentenced last month to two years in prison and has been allowed to remain free on bond while he appeals the case. Spencer allowed Maureen McDonnell, too, to remain free during her appeal.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments in Robert McDonnell’s case in May; the outcome almost certainly will affect the former first lady.
The legal process — which drew national attention — has been a painful one for the McDonnell family, but perhaps most acutely for its matriarch. Defense attorneys argued that the McDonnells’ marriage was broken and that the former first lady had developed something of a crush on Williams. They portrayed her as at times deceitful, at other times tyrannical, and often the driver of wrongdoing. Maureen McDonnell became close to Williams before her husband did, and she was the one who solicited some of the case’s most memorable gifts, including a New York City luxury clothing shopping spree and a Rolex watch for the governor.
Staffers who worked in the governor’s mansion said Maureen McDonnell was an intolerable boss; one acknowledged referring to her as a “nut bag.” Robert McDonnell testified that his wife ignored an entreaty to save their marriage. The McDonnells began living apart before the trial and are still doing so. They were indicted days after Robert McDonnell left office in 2013.
“It’s hard for me to imagine anything worse than what I’ve already endured,” Maureen McDonnell said during the sentencing.
At Friday’s hearing, eight witnesses painted an entirely different portrait of the former first lady.
This Maureen McDonnell was a kindhearted, generous person who cared above all about helping her husband succeed and building a strong family. She wanted to use her time as first lady to help others, particularly military families, but she was deeply uncomfortable with the public role and often anxious and overwhelmed.
“She didn’t want to let Bob down. She didn’t want to disappoint him,” said Mary Guy, a longtime friend who said that even as a young woman, McDonnell’s greatest ambition was to be a wife and mother.
“Houses, things, jewelry — they were never important to her,” Guy said. “If you ask me what I think she’s lost, she’s lost her life’s work.”
Rachel McDonnell, the couple’s daughter, said she learned about hard work from her mother, who had three part-time jobs when Rachel was an infant and Robert McDonnell was in law school. She said that her mother had not wanted her to testify but that she insisted on doing so to talk about her mother’s good traits.
Friends and family packed several rows of the federal courthouse in Richmond to show support for the former first lady, but the courtroom was noticeably less full than when the former governor was sentenced last month.
Then, supporters had formed a long line stretching down the seventh-floor hallway well before the hearing began, and even some close friends were relegated to an overflow room. All five of the couple’s children attended their father’s sentencing. Three attended their mother’s. Oldest daughter Jeanine Zubowsky, who gave birth to the couple’s first grandchild just weeks ago, did not attend. Nor did Sean McDonnell, one of their twin sons.
Lisa Kratz Thomas, a close friend who runs a program helping prisoners reenter society, said Maureen McDonnell has been humiliated by the events of the past year and rarely leaves her home. “She’s lost her dignity,” Thomas said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber argued that a prison sentence was required to show a skeptical public that corrupt politicians — and those who assist them — will be dealt with seriously. She said that Maureen McDonnell repeatedly asked Williams for money and gifts over two years.
“This was not a mistake. This was not a one-time lapse in judgment,” she said. “This was a crime of opportunistic greed.”
Before announcing a sentence, Spencer mused at length about the trial and the dual portraits of Maureen McDonnell that he was forced to reconcile. On one hand, he said, McDonnell was a loving mother and wife who made significant accomplishments as first lady. On the other hand, he said, some of the unflattering portrayals of her were not inaccurate.
“It’s difficult to get to the heart of who Mrs. McDonnell truly is,” Spencer said.
Spencer also highlighted the defense’s trial tactic of putting responsibility on the former first lady. That strategy, if successful, might have resulted in acquittals for her and her husband. Maureen McDonnell is not considered a public official, meaning if jurors thought she alone had a relationship with Williams, they probably would not have been able to convict anyone.
Spencer called that defense “curious” and termed it, “Let’s throw mama under the bus.” He also noted some family members’ efforts to pin responsibility on Maureen McDonnell during her husband’s sentencing, calling those sentiments, “Let’s throw mama off the train.”
Maureen McDonnell, though, did not shy from taking blame. She thanked Spencer for showing mercy on her husband — who had similarly asked the judge to show leniency to his wife — and referred, in particular, to a comment the judge made about her letting a “serpent” into the governor’s mansion.
“That is true, and the venom from that snake has poisoned my marriage, has poisoned my family and has poisoned the commonwealth that I love,” Maureen McDonnell said.
Defense attorneys asked that Maureen McDonnell be sentenced to probation and 4,000 hours of community service; prosecutors wanted a sentence of 18 months. The year-and-a-day term allows her to get 54 days knocked off for good behavior.
Randy Singer, Maureen McDonnell’s attorney, said that she, like her husband, would appeal. “We still believe in Maureen’s innocence, and we intend to seek her complete vindication,” he said.
Still, prosecutors, at least, hailed Friday’s outcome as a sort of conclusion to the case.
“Today’s sentencing brings to an end an unfortunate chapter in Virginia state government,” U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said, “and an opportunity to move forward here in the commonwealth.”
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"hard for me to imagine anything worse than what I’ve already endured"
Really? Spoken like a princess from the land of entitlement. I can think of several things off the top of my head. How about:
• contracting ebola
• losing a child
• losing life, limb, or a child in a totally unnecessary war
• losing your job and home due to protracted unemployment
• losing your home to superstorm Sandy or hurricane Katrina
• I could go on...
This woman is so delusional it is laughable. She gets a man (who is not her husband) to take her on a $20,000 luxury shopping spree even as that man tried to curry favor from her husband the governor yet she thinks she did nothing wrong.
And what about those kids? They were old enough to know that what they were doing was wrong. Receiving gift after gift and shopping trips knowing full well that they were not paying for any of it.... and mommy and daddy were not paying for any of it... but they never stopped to wonder if they would be getting all this largess if their father was not the governor? They deserve a few months in jail and probation as well. >:(
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What Maureen McDonnell would have said, if the governor had his own trial
By Matt Zapotosky
Former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell was prepared to tell a jury that she assiduously hid her financial dealings with a Richmond area businessman from her husband because she feared Robert F. McDonnell would put a stop to them, but she was only willing to testify if she and the onetime governor were given separate trials, according to court papers.
The scenario, of course, is purely hypothetical. The affidavit, made public Wednesday, was prepared nearly a year ago when the couple were seeking to sever their trials — a request denied by U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer. Maureen McDonnell remained silent until the day she was sentenced.
But if a judge had agreed, Maureen McDonnell would have taken the stand at her husband’s trial and supported virtually every aspect of his defense, according to the affidavit. Sometimes gift by gift and action by action, she would have spoken of how she accepted lavish gifts and loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and invoked her husband’s name to help Williams’s business interests — without the former governor ever knowing about it, according to the affidavit.
The McDonnells ultimately were convicted of public corruption for their dealings with Williams, after jurors concluded they conspired to use the governor’s office to help advance Williams’s dietary supplement company in exchange for $177,000 in loans, gifts and luxury goods. Robert McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison, and his wife to a year and a day.
The declaration from William Burck, Maureen McDonnell’s defense attorney, is now a part of Robert McDonnell’s appeal. Among other things, the former governor is arguing that Spencer erred when he refused to order separate trials.
Maureen McDonnell has yet to detail the specific grounds on which she intends to appeal, though her attorneys did not object to unsealing the declaration and have indicated that the ruling against separate trials could also be a part of their case.
Even when they shared a defense table, attorneys for both Robert and Maureen McDonnell cast the former first lady as the driver of many dealings with Williams — an oft-talked about strategy that some have criticized as throwing Maureen McDonnell under the bus. But Maureen McDonnell would have been a powerful witness to support the former governor’s account. And the affidavit, signed March 25 last year, shows that she was willing to shoulder much of the blame long before the trial.
To be sure, jurors heard plenty of evidence that linked Robert McDonnell and Williams directly. The former governor enjoyed golf outings on Williams’s tab, and he took steps to help Williams — asking his health secretary to meet with the businessman, for example, and once pulling out a bottle of Anatabloc, Williams’s supplement, during a meeting with state human resource officials and touting its benefits.
But Maureen McDonnell could have buttressed key cogs of the former governor’s defense. She would have testified, for example, that “she and her husband were suffering significant marital communications problems during Mr. McDonnell’s term as Governor,” and that Williams “filled a void that she was feeling in her life, as he gave her both gifts and attention,” according to the affidavit.
Maureen McDonnell would have asserted that she never told Robert McDonnell that Williams funded much of a high-end shopping spree in New York City in April 2011, and she would have said she did not tell Robert McDonnell about a $50,000 loan that Williams gave her until after she had spent the money, according to the affidavit.
Of the Rolex watch, Maureen McDonnell would have said she told her husband it was a gift from “Santa,” and he did not learn it really came from Williams until March 2013 — when the investigation was well in hand, according to the affidavit.
Maureen McDonnell also would have testified that she invoked her husband’s name — without his approval — when e-mailing a member of his staff to check on studies that Williams wanted, according to the affidavit. And she would have testified that she told her staff that her husband wanted gift bags at a National Governors Association event to be stuffed with samples of Williams’s dietary supplement, Anatabloc, even though Robert McDonnell knew nothing about it, according to the affidavit.
If jurors had believed Maureen McDonnell had her own relationship with Williams — and she did not act in concert with her husband — it would have laid a path to acquittal. That is because Maureen McDonnell is not considered a public official, and prosecutors had to demonstrate that she and Robert McDonnell conspired to sell the governor’s office.
According to the affidavit, Maureen McDonnell was unwilling to testify at their joint trial because she feared a tangential obstruction charge that she faced alone, according to the affidavit. The former first lady figured that testifying about deceiving her husband might damage her credibility, and jurors would then convict her of obstruction, according to the affidavit. Jurors ultimately convicted her of that count anyway, but Spencer threw it out after the trial for technical, legal reasons.
The affidavit would not have bound Maureen McDonnell to take the stand if Spencer had separated the trials, and perhaps the notion of her testifying is pure fantasy. Burck indicated that though Maureen McDonnell was willing to testify at her husband’s trial, she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights at her own.
That would have created an interesting quirk. If the former governor was tried first, prosecutors might have been able to use a transcript of Maureen McDonnell’s testimony at her trial, according to the affidavit. But Burck wrote that the former first lady felt the “negative impact” of that would be less than jurors hearing her in person.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment for this article. Lawyers for Robert and Maureen McDonnell could not immediately be reached.
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Appeals judges pepper McDonnell defense with skeptical questions
By Matt Zapotosky
RICHMOND — A panel of three federal appeals court judges expressed skepticism Tuesday about Robert F. McDonnell’s bid to have his public corruption convictions overturned, peppering an attorney for the former Virginia governor with pointed questions and zeroing in on the instructions given to jurors in the case.
Although it is impossible to predict the outcome based on the hearing — and there were signs that the judges found some of McDonnell’s arguments plausible — defense attorney Noel Francisco did not appear to have an easy battle.
The judges focused most of their questions on the instructions jurors received about the law, and at least two of the judges expressed doubts that McDonnell’s team was on the right side of the debate. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz said flatly that some of what defense attorneys had wanted jurors to be told was “erroneous,” and Judge Robert B. King highlighted more than once a particular jury instruction that he thought was favorable to McDonnell.
“I don’t know how it could be any better for you,” King said.
Judge Stephanie D. Thacker seemed more sympathetic to Francisco’s points, but even she reminded him that the appeals hearing was not an opportunity to retry the case. “It sounds like you’re actually putting the facts to a jury,” she said, before advising him to talk specifically about how the jurors were instructed.
McDonnell (R) and his wife, Maureen, were convicted last year of public corruption. Prosecutors alleged that they had agreed to help Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. promote and seek state studies of his company’s dietary supplement in exchange for $177,000 in loans and gifts, including vacations and luxury goods. McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison; his wife was sentenced to a year and a day.
The McDonnells have been allowed to remain free on bond while their appeals are pending, a sign that the judges think that the appeal raises issues at least worthy of their consideration. It could be several months before the court rules.
At Tuesday’s hearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, Robert McDonnell sat in the first row flanked by several of his children. Maureen McDonnell, whose case is proceeding separately, also attended, sitting in a second row that was reserved for family.
Federal prosecutors and Robert McDonnell’s defense team had submitted to the 4th Circuit hundreds of pages of written arguments detailing why the judges should either set aside the jury’s verdict — and possibly let McDonnell walk away a free man — or uphold it and order the former governor to report to prison. Tuesday’s hearing gave them the opportunity to make their arguments in person.
The judges were all nominated to the appeals court by Democratic presidents: Motz and King by President Bill Clinton, and Thacker by President Obama.
King, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, notably wrote the appeals court decision affirming all but one of the guilty verdicts against former U.S. representative William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who was also convicted of public corruption. Motz worked previously as a Maryland assistant attorney general and a state Court of Special Appeals associate judge. Thacker was an attorney in the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
Before Tuesday, defense attorneys had raised myriad issues that they say merit granting McDonnell a new trial or vacating the charges against McDonnell entirely. Francisco said Tuesday that the most significant of those issues were that the McDonnells neither promised to perform nor performed any “official acts” for Williams in exchange for gifts and loans, and that jurors were incorrectly instructed on the topic.
The former governor’s position on that front has been buttressed by a cadre of amicus briefs from high-profile supporters, including former U.S. and state attorneys general, White House lawyers, prominent business leaders and law professors.
Motz hinted that she could be sympathetic. At one point, she remarked that the “quo” — or what Williams received from McDonnell — was “much thinner” than the “quid” in the case, and she asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard D. Cooke whether he felt a strong quid did not require a similarly strong quo. She said that if McDonnell had performed only one of the so-called official acts for Williams, prosecutors might have chosen not to bring the case at all.
Cooke said that the quid — $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods — had “evidentiary force” and that the timing of gifts in relation to official acts showed there was a connection between the two.
On the issue of how jurors were instructed, the judges at times seemed more favorable toward the prosecution’s arguments than the defense’s. Motz said some of the instructions proposed by defense attorneys would have been incorrect, and she noted that jurors were told the legal meaning of “official act.” She wondered, however, whether more instructions should have been provided to restrict what jurors could view as official acts.
King pointed out more than once that defense attorneys were awarded a generous instruction: that if jurors determined that the governor had acted in good faith, he could not be convicted of a crime.
“They gave you the ‘good faith’ instruction, which wrapped it all up,” he said.
The judges also looked into whether jurors were questioned enough about pretrial publicity, especially because they were not asked whether they had “formed an opinion” about the case based on media coverage. They asked both Francisco and Cooke about the jury-selection process, particularly about what questions the trial court judge, James R. Spencer, allowed the parties to ask prospective jurors.
Francisco said after the hearing that he was “very pleased with how the argument came out.” Former Virginia attorney general Andrew P. Miller, who watched the hearing and has joined in briefs supporting McDonnell, said it would be “presumptuous” to try to glean anything from the judges’ questions.
For his part, McDonnell said he has been working at a consulting job in Virginia Beach — where he moved recently — and hanging out with family, especially at graduation ceremonies for his children. As he has throughout the case, he asserted his innocence.
“There’s nothing that has been done here that violated the law,” McDonnell said. “I know that in my heart and in my soul.”
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McDonnell and wife seen together at Virginia Beach show
By Patrick Wilson
After months of arriving to court separately and saying they were estranged, former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, sat with each other at a Saturday comedy show in Virginia Beach, giving some in attendance the impression they are together again.
The former first couple - with appeals of their corruption convictions pending and facing the possibility of prison - sat several rows back from the stage at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts.
"When I saw them together, I said, 'Hmm, interesting,' " said state Del. Joe Lindsey, D-Norfolk, who sat two rows in front of the McDonnells. "They seemed to be very cordial, and there didn't seem to be detachment at all between them."
Norfolk Circuit Court Clerk George Schaefer, who has known the McDonnells since the early 1990s, said the two were laughing and talking to each other in a way that made it seem they were no longer separated.
"It's nice to see them together," Schaefer said.
Saturday's performance was the one-woman comedy "Sister's Summer School Catechism: God Never Takes a Vacation," a benefit presented by Virginia Musical Theatre and the Catholic Commission for the Arts, according to the theater's Facebook page.
A source close to the McDonnells who asked not to be identified, said it's a mistake to think they're reconciling.
Their twin sons are both moving soon, and the McDonnells have been spending time with their children and family, the source said.
They both planned to be at the Saturday event and decided to sit together with another couple they're friends with to be cordial publicly.
"I wouldn't read anything more into it," the source said.
Blois Olson, a crisis management specialist who has acted as a spokesman for Bob McDonnell during the appeal, said there was no comment from the governor or his attorneys.
During last year's trial, the McDonnells had little interaction and always arrived at court separately. As recently as May 12, when appeal arguments for Bob McDonnell were heard in Richmond, the couple arrived at the courthouse separately and did not sit next to each other.
The McDonnells' separation was first revealed publicly during their six-week trial on public corruption charges, when Bob McDonnell testified they were no longer living together.
He said Maureen McDonnell was living in the couple's Henrico County home and he had been staying with his priest since a week before the trial began in July 2014.
"I just didn't have the emotional ability to go home and revisit things every night with Maureen," he said.
He said their marriage became broken during his term as governor.
By late 2011, "we were not able to talk about anything of any substance," he testified, describing his wife as prone to outbursts of "uncontrollable anger."
Defense attorneys sought to show that the couple were so estranged that they couldn't have conspired to sell the influence of the governor's mansion in exchange for more than $177,000 in gifts and loans from business executive Jonnie Williams Sr., who had wanted state-backed research for a dietary supplement.
The defense claimed the first lady initiated many of the couple's interactions with Williams and that the governor was unaware of them.
Federal prosecutors introduced evidence to the contrary. Toward the end of the trial, lawyers even bickered over a detailed analysis of how many nights the McDonnells spent together. During a period from 2011-13, according to the FBI, they spent 90 percent of nights together.
A federal jury last year convicted each McDonnell of multiple bribery and corruption felonies, and Judge James Spencer sentenced Bob McDonnell to two years in prison and Maureen McDonnell to a year and a day. They were allowed to remain free pending an appellate decision from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bob McDonnell was an assistant prosecutor and state delegate in Virginia Beach before becoming attorney general and then being elected governor in 2009. Beloved by fellow Republicans and popular as governor, he was considered a potential vice presidential running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012, but the gifts scandal ended that possibility.
McDonnell has said repeatedly that although he made mistakes in accepting gifts and loans, he does not believe he broke the law.
Longtime Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth said it would not be surprising to him if the McDonnells reconciled, "given what he said about his commitment to family."
Holsworth also noted that Bob McDonnell attended his wife's sentencing hearing.
"The defense strategy of emphasizing their marital problems was ridiculous," he said. "What was more surprising was the cynical nature of the defense strategy... effectively throwing the first lady under the bus as the person who caused it all."
Maureen McDonnell did not testify during the trial.
"A decent interval has passed between what they did at the trial and what's happening now," Holsworth said.
Alan D. Albert, a former state government official who handles federal criminal defense, has known the McDonnells for years and said the broken-marriage defense was "always a trial tactic more than a reality."
The couple appearing together now is "unlikely to really be a significant issue in the appeal" because the appeal is focused on whether federal corruption law is too broad, he said.
But still, "I doubt any lawyer representing them would have advised appearing in public in this manner during the pendency of the appeal, because no good can come of it.
"You invite people to doubt the credibility of the defense you raised at trial."
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Bob McDonnell loses appeal over public corruption convictions
By Matt Zapotosky
A federal appeals panel court on Thursday unanimously affirmed the public corruption convictions against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, writing in an 89-page opinion that the onetime Republican rising star "received a fair trial and was duly convicted by a jury of his fellow Virginians."
The decision, authored by judge Stephanie D. Thacker and joined by judges Robert B. King and Diana Gribbon Motz, thoroughly rejects all of the arguments McDonnell raised about why his convictions should be thrown out — or why he should at least be given a new trial. It also brings to a close an important chapter in the story that emerged more than two years ago when the Washington Post first reported on the governor's strange relationship with a Richmond executive trying to promote his business.
While McDonnell's attorneys have vowed previously to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court — and his wife is pursuing a separate, ongoing appeal — it is now likely he will be sent to federal prison to start serving his two-year sentence.
McDonnell has been vigorously asserting his innocence since the day last year that he and his wife were charged with public corruption, and that effort did not stop when jurors decided in September that the pair corruptly lent the prestige of the governor's office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. McDonnell's wide-ranging appeal raised a myriad of issues, but most importantly, he asserted that he neither agreed to nor performed any so-called “official acts,” for Williams in exchange for bribes, and that jurors were instructed wrongly on the topic.
The appeals court panel disagreed, asserting that the government had “exceeded its burden” of proof on the topic of official acts. The opinion cited three particular ways in which McDonnell tried to use his office to help Williams: trying to get researchers to study Williams’s product, Anatabloc; trying to the state tobacco commission to fund studies of an ingredient in his product; and trying to get Anatabloc included in the health insurance plan for state employees.
They also wrote that U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer did not err in how he instructed jurors, and noted that in at least one instance, McDonnell's lawyers seemed to want to use the instructions as a “thinly veiled attempt to argue the defense’s case.”
McDonnell's appeal had enjoyed broad and high-profile support — former U.S. and state attorneys general, White House lawyers, prominent business leaders and law professors had filed amicus briefs supporting him — but the appeals court had showed signs of skepticism. At a hearing in May, the judges peppered one of his lawyers with questions that seemed critical of his point of view.
In a statement, McDonnell said: “I am greatly disappointed with the Court’s decision today. During my nearly 40 years of public service, I have never violated my oath of office nor disregarded the law. I remain highly confident in the justice system and the grace of our God that full vindication will come in time. I remain very blessed to have the unwavering support of my family and great friends which continues to sustain me.”
His lawyers wrote they would “review the opinion carefully and continue to pursue all legal options.”
“The fight for justice for our client is far from over,” they wrote.
Attorneys for Williams and Maureen McDonnell declined to comment. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia said officials were working on a statement.
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McDonnell vows to continue legal fight despite appeals court defeat
By Shawn Maclauchlan
RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell remains confident he will be vindicated in court, despite another legal defeat Friday.
The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed McDonnell's conviction on Friday, saying in an 89-page ruling he "received a fair trial and was duly convicted by a jury of his fellow Virginians. We have no cause to undo what has been done."
McDonnell and his legal team released statements Friday expressing their disappointment and pledging to fight for innocence.
“I am greatly disappointed with the Court’s decision today. During my nearly 40 years of public service, I have never violated my oath of office nor disregarded the law," McDonnell said in a statement. "I remain highly confident in the justice system and the grace of our God that full vindication will come in time. I remain very blessed to have the unwavering support of my family and great friends which continues to sustain me.”
McDonnell still has the options to appeal to the full-court panel or to the U.S. Supreme Court and his legal team is vowing to continue the legal fight.
“We are disappointed with the Court’s decision affirming Governor McDonnell’s convictions," the legal team of Hank Asbill, John Brownlee and Noel Francisco wrote in a statement. "We will review the opinion carefully and continue to pursue all legal options. The fight for justice for our client is far from over.”
McDonnell was allowed to remain free while his case made its way through the appeals process. The court ruled in January that McDonnell was not a flight risk or danger to the community and the appeal is "not for the purpose of delay and raises a substantive question of law or fact."
McDonnell was sentenced to 24 months in prison for corruption charges stemming from a political scandal involving gifts he and his wife Maureen McDonnell received from then-CEO of Star Scientific Inc., Jonnie R. Williams. McDonnell claims he was unaware of his wife's lavish New York City shopping spree, paid for by Williams, among other gifts the McDonnells received.
Williams resigned from Star Scientific amid the scandal, and later testified against the McDonnells. Cross examination revealed the government granted Williams immunity in July 2013, six months before the McDonnells were indicted.
During the trial, Bob McDonnell testified he and his wife Maureen were no longer living together and said they began living separate lives 20 years ago. He said their marriage began to fail as his political career began to take off.
Maureen McDonnell faces 12 months and one day in prison on her federal corruption charge.
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Federal appeals court turns down former Va. governor McDonnell, again
By Matt Zapotosky
Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has but one avenue left — the U.S. Supreme Court — in his bid to overturn his public corruption convictions, and some experts say it is likely that he will have to pursue his challenge behind bars.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on Tuesday turned down McDonnell’s request to have the entire court, or the three judges who previously rejected his appeal, reconsider the case. The decision was another resounding defeat for the onetime Republican rising star: None of the Richmond-based court’s 15 active judges voted in favor of a rehearing, though seven disqualified themselves and did not participate.
Experts say the decision could put McDonnell, who was allowed to remain free while his appeals were pending, in federal prison within a few months, though he can still fight to stay out. In statements issued late Tuesday, McDonnell and his legal team said they were “disappointed” by the court’s decision, and they vowed to press on to the Supreme Court.
“I look forward to the day when vindication is obtained and my family’s good name is fully restored,” McDonnell said.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted in September of public corruption for essentially lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. Jurors found unanimously that the couple helped Williams promote his dietary supplement company by arranging meetings for him with other state officials and allowing him use of the governor’s mansion in exchange for the businessman’s largesse.
The former governor was sentenced to two years in prison, his wife to a year and a day. Their appeals have been built largely around the argument that they neither performed nor promised to perform any “official acts” for Williams in exchange for bribes and that U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer defined the term too broadly for jurors. They asserted — and many legal observers agreed — that the case could have far-reaching implications, criminalizing routine dealings between politicians and wealthy benefactors.
Maureen McDonnell’s appeal is pending, with oral arguments tentatively scheduled for October. A three-judge panel from the 4th Circuit, though, unanimously rejected the former governor’s appeal last month. Some experts said the panel’s opinion and the court’s decision Tuesday not to reconsider the case leave McDonnell little hope of persuading the Supreme Court to intervene. And that likely means McDonnell will have to report to prison sooner rather than later, experts said.
“You never say never, but typically the Supreme Court is looking for a novel issue or split in the Circuit that would warrant considering this case, and the 4th Circuit adopted the view that the law was clear and the facts applied appropriately to the law,” said Jacob Frenkel, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer with the Shulman Rogers firm who is unconnected to the McDonnell case.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia declined to immediately comment on the decision.
Of the eight judges who voted against rehearing McDonnell’s appeal, six were nominated to their seats on the 4th Circuit by Democratic presidents and two were nominated by Republican presidents. Of those who disqualified themselves, four were nominated by Republican presidents and three by Democratic presidents. The judges did not specify the reasons for declining to weigh in. Experts said their disqualifications were not surprising, given that they might have had political or personal connections to the former governor.
Matt Kaiser, a white-collar criminal defense attorney with the Kaiser, LeGrand & Dillon law firm, said that although the Supreme Court agrees to hear very few cases each year, McDonnell’s had “more legs than most cases would.” He said the opinion of the 4th Circuit panel did seem to potentially criminalize routine political dealings, noting that even Donald Trump’s contention that Hillary Rodham Clinton attended his wedding in exchange for campaign contributions might be considered part of a federal bribery case under a broad interpretation of the decision.
“I think it’s not a terribly unfair reading of the law after the McDonnell 4th Circuit opinion to say really almost any politician violates that statute,” Kaiser said. He said if the Supreme Court justices were interested in the case, they would likely allow McDonnell to remain free while they considered it.
McDonnell almost certainly will try to remain free while the legal battle continues. Experts said he can first ask the 4th Circuit to stay the mandate of its decision — which is scheduled to issue automatically in seven days — and if that fails, turn to the Supreme Court to delay his having to report to prison.
University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said both efforts are a long shot to succeed; the 4th Circuit, he said, could turn down McDonnell in just days, the Supreme Court in maybe a month.
A lower court judge would then probably give McDonnell a date by which to report to prison, and federal officials would find a facility appropriate for the former governor. Frenkel said it is “reasonable to expect that he will be required to report to prison in the next 30 to 60 days, regardless of a likely attempt to appeal to the Supreme Court.” The former governor has 90 days to file a petition for a writ of certiorari, asking the nation’s highest court to consider his case.
Where McDonnell would go to prison is unclear. He had previously requested to remain near his home in the Richmond area, possibly at Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg. Prison officials will consider that recommendation, McDonnell’s particular security concerns and the beds available at various institutions in selecting a spot for him.
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McDonnell asks to stay out of prison as he takes legal battle to Supreme Court
By Matt Zapotosky
Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to let him stay out of prison while he tries to convince the Supreme Court to throw out his public corruption convictions, arguing that his case still raises “substantial” questions despite his mounting losses throughout the legal process.
In a 23-page filing, McDonnell’s lawyers wrote that he had obtained experienced lawyers to take his case to the Supreme Court, and he asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to stay the mandate in his case or to “clarify” that he can remain free while his lawyers prepare to take the case up the chain.
An appeals court panel last month rejected McDonnell’s challenge to his convictions — and the entire 4th Circuit declined to take up the matter just days ago — but McDonnell argued he should be allowed to stay out of prison nonetheless.
“After all, he remains neither a flight risk nor a threat to public safety, and the questions presented by his case remain ‘substantial,’ notwithstanding that a panel of this Court has rejected them,” McDonnell's lawyers wrote in the filing. “The Supreme Court should be given the same opportunity, and Gov. McDonnell should not be required to serve the bulk of his 24-month prison sentence before it has that chance.”
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted in September of lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. He was sentenced to two years in prison, she to a year and a day. Their appeals have proceeded separately, and oral arguments are tentatively scheduled in Maureen McDonnell’s case for October.
Robert McDonnell has three months to file a petition asking the Supreme Court to take up his case, but experts say he could be in prison much sooner — perhaps in two months — if he is unable to convince a judge to let him keep his freedom while that is pending. If the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit turns him down, though, McDonnell could still ask the Supreme Court to delay his reporting to prison. The appeals court had previously allowed McDonnell to remain free with his case pending.
McDonnell’s filing Thursday argued that it was likely the Supreme Court would take up his case because it raised “important, high-profile issues of constitutional dimension” and involved “political conduct that occurs routinely across the country.” The filing also argued that if McDonnell were to be sent to prison with the matter pending, he would likely have to serve the bulk of his sentence before the Supreme Court made a decision.
“Gov. McDonnell will never be able to recover that lost time,” McDonnell’s lawyers wrote.
McDonnell’s lawyers wrote that federal prosecutors intended to oppose their request, though they had not filed a motion as of Thursday morning.
McDonnell’s challenge to the Supreme Court will likely hinge on the notion that he neither performed nor agreed to perform any so-called “official acts” for Williams, and that U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer defined the term too broadly for jurors. His lawyers pressed that point Thursday and argued the appeals court’s decision conflicted with decisions in other circuits, increasing the likelihood the Supreme Court might take up the case.
They also argued his case would have far reaching consequences for politicians, giving prosecutors “the opportunity and basis to investigate and charge essentially any official they choose,” and that jurors in his case were not questioned thoroughly enough about pre-trial publicity.
The high court hears only about 75 or 80 of the roughly 10,000 petitions it receives each session, according to information on the court’s Web site.
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Maureen McDonnell to appeals court: You can clear me and not my husband
By Matt Zapotosky
Former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell on Wednesday made her first bid to convince a federal appeals court that her public corruption convictions should be thrown out, even though her husband’s were allowed to stand, by stressing her “unique status as a non-public official” as a reason for her innocence.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had requested the filing from Robert McDonnell’s wife to help its judges decide whether — and how — her case can be differentiated from her husband’s. A three-judge panel last month rejected the former Republican governor’s bid to have his public corruption convictions set aside, and the entire 4th Circuit declined to take up the matter further, leaving the Supreme Court as Robert McDonnell’s last hope.
Although she was tried with her husband, Maureen McDonnell is pursuing her case separately, and oral arguments before the appeals court are scheduled for October 29. Her lawyers argued Wednesday that while her husband’s appeal resolved many of the issues in her case, the federal bribery statute under which they both were convicted was unconstitutionally vague — at least when it came to the former first lady.
As the “high school-educated spouse of a politician,” her lawyers wrote, Maureen McDonnell could not have “knowingly and deliberately” conspired to break the law with her husband because she couldn’t have known his seemingly innocuous actions qualified as the basis for a federal bribery case.
"As the extraordinary number and types of amicus briefs attest, notable public officials with extensive legal training had no idea that those actions would violate federal law,” Maureen McDonnell’s lawyers wrote. “A citizen like Mrs. McDonnell, without any legal training or public office experience, could not possibly have known.”
Prosecutors are expected to respond to the former first lady’s filing next month.
Both McDonnells were convicted in September of lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. Robert McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison, and his wife was sentenced to a year and a day. Both were allowed to remain out of prison while they appealed the case. Robert McDonnell is now asking the appeals court to allow him to keep his freedom as he pursues a challenge with the Supreme Court.
Experts have said it is extremely unlikely that Maureen McDonnell will get her convictions thrown out in light of the outcome in her husband’s case. Even her lawyers conceded that there existed “undeniably substantial overlap” in the couple’s appeals.
Like Robert McDonnell, Maureen McDonnell alleged that her husband neither performed nor promised to perform any “official” acts for Williams. (Maureen McDonnell could perform no such acts because she is not a public official.) And like Robert McDonnell, Maureen McDonnell alleged jurors were instructed wrongly on the topic.
Both McDonnells argued it was improper for them to be tried together, and both said prospective jurors were not questioned thoroughly enough, especially about pre-trial publicity.
In the filing Wednesday, Maureen McDonnell’s lawyers said they stood behind the arguments Robert and Maureen McDonnell had both raised, and said prosecutors hadn’t proven a conspiracy between the two. They asserted that the outcome of the case gave prosecutors too much leeway to charge non-office holders.
“The danger of unbridled prosecutorial discretion is particularly acute in a case like this one where prosecutors, in an unprecedented move, indicted not just the public official but also his spouse,” Maureen McDonnell’s lawyers wrote.
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Appeals Court: Convicted Ex-Guv Bob McDonnell Is Going To Prison
Source: TPM
Nearly a year after his conviction on federal corruption charges, Virginia ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) appears to be headed for prison.
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected McDonnell's request to stay out from behind bars while he appeals his convictions to the Supreme Court.
The order states that the court's mandate will take effect in seven days, suggesting that McDonnell could be ordered to report to prison as early as next week. But the former governor's lawyers have suggested that he intends to ask the Supreme Court to grant him release pending that appeal, according to The Washington Post.
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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bob-mcdonnell-going-to-jail
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Finally! ::)
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Finally! ::)
;D
I saw the headline and thought "oh, Bay is going to start his week with a smile!"
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;D
I saw the headline and thought "oh, Bay is going to start his week with a smile!"
Have you ever seen anyone try to weasel out of prison like this? When former DC Mayor Marion Barry was convicted on drug charges, he hung his head in shame and went off to prison. No appeals, no denials, no endless legal motions. You do the crime you do the time. It is as simple as that!
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In an alternate universe, Robert McDonnell is running for president right now, battling with Jeb while they both court Trump for his endorsement and donor dollars.
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What I find amusing and sad is that the disgraced governor is still insisting he did nothing wrong… even as a jury, and an appeals court have (twice) found him responsible for wrongdoing. I refuse to believe he is a total moron; he must know that getting all those gifts and loans for himself, his wife, his children… staying in Williams’ vacation home and driving his Ferrari (while serving as Governor) was wrong. So all his denials at this late stage just make him look even more craven. And, of course, this is all coming from one of the religious types who like to lecture the rest of us on how to live our lives.
And to think it all started with them belittling the help: a former chef in the governor's mansion who turned the tables on them and blew the whole case wide open. I should find that guy and buy him a drink! :D
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::)
Thanks To Chief Justice Roberts, Bob McDonnell To Stay Out Of Prison ... For Now
The order is only temporary, and it could change once the court hears from federal prosecutors.
by Cristian Farias
In a short order issued Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts spared former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell from prison while he appeals his case to the Supreme Court.
The request from McDonnell's lawyers arrived at the Supreme Court on Friday in the form of a stay application -- a procedural request that, if granted, can put on hold a lower-court ruling while the case proceeds to a full-on appeal.
Roberts' order did not express an opinion on the merits of McDonnell's appeal.
In addition to granting the ex-governor's request, Roberts' order directed the federal prosecutors to file a response to it by Wednesday, after which the court could either issue a new order extending the stay or lift it altogether. If the court lifts the stay, McDonnell would have to report to prison.
Justices handle emergency requests such as McDonnell's by geographical location. Roberts is assigned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which covers Virginia. Last week, that court denied McDonnell's bid to keep himself out of prison while he took his case to the Supreme Court.
The 4th Circuit upheld McDonnell's multiple convictions for corruption and other charges in July.
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What I find amusing and sad is that the disgraced governor is still insisting he did nothing wrong… even as a jury, and an appeals court have (twice) found him responsible for wrongdoing. I refuse to believe he is a total moron; he must know that getting all those gifts and loans for himself, his wife, his children… staying in Williams’ vacation home and driving his Ferrari (while serving as Governor) was wrong. So all his denials at this late stage just make him look even more craven. And, of course, this is all coming from one of the religious types who like to lecture the rest of us on how to live our lives.
And to think it all started with them belittling the help: a former chef in the governor's mansion who turned the tables on them and blew the whole case wide open. I should find that guy and buy him a drink! :D
there is a certain kind of christian who truly believes that our laws don't apply to them and that they are literally exempt.
I'm wondering if he suffers from this kind of delusion as well
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US Supreme Court: Ex-Virginia gov to remain free for now
Source: AP
By LARRY O'DELL
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will not have to go to prison while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to consider his appeal of his public corruption convictions, the justices ruled Monday.
The court issued a brief order overturning a lower court's decision on McDonnell's incarceration.
McDonnell made a last-ditch plea to the high court to stay out of prison shortly after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond refused to grant the same request.
The Republican former governor was facing the possibility of having to report to prison within the next several weeks to begin his two-year sentence, handed down in January for doing favors for a wealthy businessman in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4ae61c50539e4bd98283ba32d276b51a/us-supreme-court-ex-virginia-gov-remain-free-now
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Prosecutors call for ‘prompt resolution’ of Maureen McDonnell case
By Matt Zapotosky
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday pushed back against former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell’s request to put her appeal on hold, arguing the public has “significant interest in the prompt resolution” of the case.
In just a four-page filing, prosecutors urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to reject Maureen McDonnell’s call to put her case in abeyance until the Supreme Court can weigh in on her husband’s. They argued both cases had already been briefed extensively, and the appeals court should not put off addressing the issues she raised separate from her husband.
Both Maureen McDonnell and her husband, former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, were convicted last year of lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. He was sentenced to two years in prison; she to a year and a day. Though they were tried together, they appealed separately, with the former governor’s case proceeding on a slightly faster track than that of his wife.
Robert McDonnell’s lawyers are currently preparing a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his case, having already been rebuffed at each lower level. He has been allowed to remain out on bond during that process.
Maureen McDonnell, by contrast, is still presenting her case to the federal appeals court, though its focus seems to have been narrowed to issues she is raising separately from her Robert McDonnell. Maureen McDonnell has argued that while the appeals court rejected Robert McDonnell’s appeal, they could still exonerate her, citing as a reason her unique status as a non-public official.
Maureen McDonnell’s attorneys are scheduled to deliver oral arguments to the appeals court on Oct. 29, though if her case is put on hold, those arguments would likely be put off for months. Her husband is not required to file his petition with the Supreme Court until Nov. 9 and prosecutors have many weeks after that to respond.
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Bob McDonnell’s high-profile supporters urge Supreme Court to take case
by Matt Zapotosky
A bevy of high-profile supporters are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the public corruption conviction against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R), McDonnell’s team announced Monday.
Eleven separate groups filed amicus briefs supporting McDonnell’s bid to have the high court review his case, among them 66 former state attorneys general, 31 governors and a collection of former high-ranking federal officials, including a retired judge, McDonnell’s spokesman announced. The filers hailed from both parties: Democratic state Sens. David W. Marsden (Fairfax) and Charles J. Colgan (Prince William) and Sen.-elect Scott A. Surovell (Fairfax), for example, joined, as did President Obama’s former White House counsel Greg Craig, the spokesman said.
The former governor had a similar collection of prominent supporters during his appeal, which was ultimately rejected.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted last year of lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. Specifically, prosecutors alleged — and jurors agreed — that McDonnell used his office to help Williams try to advance his dietary supplement business.
McDonnell is now trying to persuade the Supreme Court to take up his case, arguing that he did not use or promise to use the power of his office to benefit Williams, and that his conviction, if allowed to stand, would criminalize routine political dealings in the United States. He filed his formal request asking the high court to consider his case last month, and prosecutors have until Dec. 8 to respond.
McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison and his wife to a year and a day. Both have been allowed to remain free while appealing their convictions. Maureen McDonnell’s case, which is at a federal appeals court, has been put on hold while the Supreme Court decides whether it will weigh in.
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Bob McDonnell again urges Supreme Court to hear his appeal
By Andrew Cain | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Lawyers for former Gov. Bob McDonnell are reasserting their arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court should take up his appeal of his corruption convictions.
“Far from ‘unexceptionable,’ this prosecution is unprecedented,” McDonnell’s lawyers write. “It hinges on a novel, sweeping theory that puts every public official at the mercy of federal prosecutors.”
In September 2014, a Richmond jury convicted the former governor and former first lady Maureen McDonnell on corruption charges stemming from their acceptance of more than $177,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams, then-CEO of Star Scientific, in exchange for promoting the company’s dietary supplement, Anatabloc.
In July of this year, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the former governor’s convictions.
On Oct. 13, McDonnell formally asked the United States Supreme Court to take up his appeal, saying the case raises issues of “extraordinary importance.”
Lawyers for the former governor wrote that the “sweeping decision” of the federal appeals court panel upheld his convictions endorsed a “limitless conception of corruption” under which “every elected official and campaign donor risks indictment.”
On Dec. 8, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli urged the U.S. Supreme Court to turn down McDonnell’s bid to have the justices take up his appeal.
Government officials wrote, “The court of appeals upheld [McDonnell’s] convictions based on the unexceptionable proposition that a public official violates federal corruption statutes where, as here, he accepts personal benefits in exchange for his agreement to influence government matters.”
In a response filed Monday evening, McDonnell’s lawyers seek to rebut the government’s arguments. They write that the U.S. is seeking to rewrite its theory of the case “to pretend that the fundamental question of what counts as ‘official action’ [under the U.S. bribery statutes] is somehow not presented.
“But what actions are ‘official’ has been the central legal issue in this case since Day One; the viability of the prosecution and legitimacy of the jury’s instructions depend on it.”
McDonnell’s lawyers also reassert that review is warranted on the issue of jury questioning. They argue that in a case involving widespread pretrial publicity, a district court must go beyond collective questioning of prospective jurors and ask individuals whether they have formed fixed opinions about the defendant’s guilt
Former first lady Maureen McDonnell’s case is on hold in the appeals court while her husband’s case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge James Spencer sentenced Bob McDonnell to two years in prison and sentenced the former first lady to a year and a day in prison. Both remain free pending the outcome of their appeals.
The Supreme Court will need to decide soon if it is to issue a final decision this term, as Bob McDonnell wants.
If the high court chooses to take the case, the court still would need to have a full briefing, oral argument and a written opinion by the end of June.
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McDonnell’s legal limbo ends, for now
By Jenna Portnoy
RICHMOND — Former governor Robert F. McDonnell was glued to a computer screen Monday morning in Virginia Beach, watching for news of his fate from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Shortly after 10:30 a.m., the news appeared: By a unanimous vote, the court ruled in McDonnell’s favor.
Although there is a chance that federal prosecutors could seek to retry McDonnell, Monday’s decision marked an end of a lengthy period of legal limbo for a man who was once a rising star in the Republican party.
For McDonnell’s supporters, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling was an affirmation of the truth they knew all along: He may have exercised poor judgment, but did not break the law.
Bill Bolling, who served as lieutenant governor under McDonnell, lamented the years-long ordeal the McDonnell family went through to get to make it to Monday’s ruling.
“They didn’t deserve this, and thankfully the Supreme Court got it right,” he said. “But where do they go to get their lives back and restore their relationships and reputations? This is not the way the process is supposed to work.”
A jury in September 2014 found unanimously that McDonnell used the governor’s office to help Jonnie R. Williams Sr., a wealthy dietary supplement company executive, advance his business interests. In exchange, Williams gave McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, $177,000 in loans, luxury vacations and even a Rolex watch.
Four months later, a federal judge sentenced McDonnell to two years in prison — a precipitous fall for a man once considered a possible contender for president.
Outside the courthouse that day, McDonnell vowed to appeal the case — saying he “never, ever betrayed my sacred oath of office.” A deeply religious Catholic, he said that his “ultimate vindication” would come from Jesus Christ.
McDonnell argued that simply referring a constituent to another state official was not among the “official actions” that are barred by the federal law.
The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or organizing an event, without a more specific action, is not “official action.”
Lawyers for Maureen McDonnell, whose separate appeal of her own conviction had been put on hold as her husband’s case played out, said his victory means she should also be vindicated.
William A. Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, counsel to Maureen McDonnell, made the following statement upon the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision overturning Bob McDonnell’s conviction:
“This decision applies no less to our client Maureen McDonnell and requires that her conviction immediately be tossed out as well, which we are confident the prosecutors must agree with,” her lawyer, William A. Burck, said in a statement. “Mrs. McDonnell, like her husband, was wrongfully convicted. We thank the Supreme Court for unanimously bringing justice back into the picture for the McDonnells.”
McDonnell has relied on faith and friendships in the year and a half that he has waited for courts to determine his fate.
In that time he has returned to Virginia Beach to live, enjoyed life as a new grandfather four times over and immersed himself in work projects.
McDonnell, who turned 62 this month, started a firm with his sister advising several national clients on attracting sports franchises to cities. He has also worked to help set up international financing for an arena in Virginia Beach and has a contract with Bay Mechanical, a construction and maintenance company owned by a family friend, according to associates familiar with his professional dealings.
They describe a rich life spent visiting with friends and developing the personal relationships that were nearly impossible to sustain during the hubbub of a governorship. And he has forged deep bonds with others going through trying circumstances.
“It’s been amazing to watch,” said Jeffrey L. McWaters, a close friend and former state senator from Virginia Beach. “It’s been a blessing for me to be around him.”
The men are part of a small bible study group that meets in the early morning — sometimes a bit too early for McDonnell who often stays up late reading and working, McWaters joked.
“I know he’s had some bad days,” he said, “but his overall demeanor has been, ‘Let’s keep going here. I know who I am. I know what kind of person I am, no matter what the U.S. attorney says.’”
McDonnell has frequently stepped out in public, attending an election night event two weeks ago for U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, who was defeated in a primary battle for the 2nd congressional district.
Redemption has been a theme in McDonnell’s life. As governor, he streamlined the process for felons to regain their voting rights and was constantly confronted by citizens grateful to him for a second chance, said Janet Vestal Kelly, a close friend who served in his cabinet as secretary of the commonwealth.
Kelly said she hopes her children learn from the example McDonnell has set for how to triumph through adversity.
“He could write a book about how to be graceful under pressure and stay strong under pressure when his whole world was falling down all around him,” she said.
The ordeal of the past three years has not left him bitter or resentful, she added.
“He prays for his enemies,” she said.
Despite being tried in federal court, McDonnell broke no state laws, prompting the General Assembly to tighten the state’s lax regulations for two consecutive years.
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McDonnell may be in the clear with the Supreme Court, but the public is another story
By Petula Dvorak
Please, Governor Rolex, hold off on the smiles and celebration.
That conviction still stands in the court of public opinion.
Because seeing former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s life laid bare — the Ferrari rides, the shopping sprees, the private jets, the $300 golf rounds and that Rolex — did plenty to explain why American voters are so cheesed off with politics now.
Yes, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned McDonnell’s bribery conviction on Monday.
And, yes, the court made it harder to prosecute public officials for the kinds of grody shenanigans that their herd calls business as usual with its ruling.
But the victory for common people — the folks whose moral compasses spin whack-a-doodle when they hear about the ways 1-percenters conduct business — remains whole.
McDonnell was convicted of 11 corruption-related charges by a federal jury in 2014. His wife, Maureen, picked up eight.
The truth is Virginia didn’t need the verdict to know that McDonnell was wrong.
The ravenous way he devoured the shiny things dangled before him, the way he refused to acknowledge during his trial that his behavior was distasteful and the way he publicly degraded his wife during the trial was enough to show he’s guilty, guilty, guilty of moral transgressions far more weighty than those we regulate with law.
This all started when the McDonnells began taking more than $175,000 in loans and gifts from Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.
Williams was trying to get help marketing his company’s new product, a nutritional supplement that contains anatabine, a close relative of nicotine found in tobacco plants that may have some anti-inflammatory properties.
That company, Star Scientific, was launched in 1990 as a maker of discount cigarettes. But cigarette sales were flagging and Williams thought he’d found another way to make Virginia tobacco plants profitable again. He targeted the governor’s mansion as his ticket to success.
Williams showered the first family with attention and gifts.
He helped pay for their daughter’s wedding reception, flew them around on private planes, bought Maureen McDonnell designer clothes, loaned them money, took them on vacation. And, yeah, he helped Virginia’s first lady buy her man a Rolex.
In exchange, the McDonnells handed out his nutritional supplement in gift bags at the governor’s mansion, arranged meetings for Williams with state officials and held a luncheon in the governor’s mansion to help launch the supplement. They gave Williams a say over who would be at a governor’s reception for health-care leaders so he could have the right audience hear his pitch.
The McDonnells said they were simply promoting Virginia products.
Is it really that different from serving Virginia wine at mansion dinners or urging folks to eat the state’s oysters during the holidays?
It sounded shady to me.
And it probably sounds icky to business folks who would like support from the governor for their home-grown products but don’t have cash to throw at him or a Ferrari to let him drive.
But what the Supreme Court told us Monday is that this is pretty common for folks who aren’t commoners. It’s the way business is too-often done.
“Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.
“The basic compact underlying representative government assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act appropriately on their concerns — whether it is the union official worried about a plant closing or the homeowners who wonder why it took five days to restore power to their neighborhood after a storm,” Roberts wrote.
In that light, sending McDonnell to prison for the favors he did for Williams “could cast a pall of potential prosecution over these relationships.”
The Supreme Court decided that it’s a complicated legal area, fuzzy enough to spare the McDonnells their impending prison sentences, giving a nod to the decent public servants out there who do good work for their constituents.
But hang in there, folks. Roberts totally gets why that Virginia jury — and the rest of us — are grossed out by this model.
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”
He said it. Tawdry.
And McDonnell knew it. Six months before he was indicted, trying to salvage his aspirations of a 2016 presidential run and avoid criminal charges, he hired a public-relations team and repaid the loans Williams gave him.
“I am deeply sorry for the embarrassment certain members of my family and I brought upon my beloved Virginia and her citizens,” McDonnell tweeted in summer 2013.
It was the first time he ever apologized for the scandal that consumed his final year in office. “I want you to know that I broke no laws and that I am committed to regaining your sacred trust and confidence,” he wrote. “I hope today’s action is another step toward that end.”
Once the indictment came down, he went back to saying he did nothing wrong or blaming his wife for what happened.
“Broke no laws”?
Nope. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, McDonnell did break laws. Unwritten ones.
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Prosecutors will drop cases against former Va. governor Robert McDonnell, wife
By Matt Zapotosky, Rachel Weiner and Rosalind S. Helderman
Federal prosecutors will not attempt to retry former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, on corruption charges, ending a years-long saga that rocked the commonwealth’s political class and cut short the rise of a Republican Party star.
The conclusion came unceremoniously, as prosecutors filed one-paragraph documents telling a federal appeals court they would move to dismiss the indictments. It means that the McDonnells — who have always maintained they did nothing illegal — will avoid criminal convictions and prison time.
But the images produced at their trial — the troubled marriage, the lavish vacations, a Ferrari ride, the Rolex watch — can hardly be undone. And the case left in its wake a new legal definition of what constitutes public corruption, based on the Supreme Court’s ruling tossing the former governor’s convictions.
In a statement, Robert McDonnell, 62, said the “final day of vindication has arrived.”
“I have become grateful for this experience of suffering, having used it to examine deeply all aspects of my life, and my role in the circumstances that led to this painful time for my beloved family and Commonwealth,” he said.
His attorneys said in a statement: “We have said from the very first day that Bob McDonnell is an innocent man. After a long ordeal traversing the entire legal system, that truth has finally prevailed. We are thrilled Governor McDonnell can finally move on from the nightmare of the last three years and begin rebuilding his life.”
William A. Burck, an attorney for Maureen McDonnell, said: “We thank the Department of Justice for the care with which they reviewed the case. We are thrilled and thankful that Maureen can now move on with her life.”
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia had pushed to move forward and retry the McDonnells even after the Supreme Court ruling that would have made their case substantially more difficult. But the decision ultimately rested with Justice Department higher-ups, who apparently rejected arguments from the prosecutors.
The Justice Department said in a statement, “After carefully considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision and the principles of federal prosecution, we have made the decision not to pursue the case further.” Justice officials declined to discuss their reasoning.
McDonnell and his wife were convicted in 2014 of public corruption for taking more than $175,000 in loans and gifts — the Rolex watch, vacations, partial payments for a daughter’s wedding reception among them — in exchange for helping Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. advance a dietary supplement his company had developed.
For Williams’s generosity, prosecutors alleged, the McDonnells arranged to connect him with state officials, let him throw a luncheon at the governor’s mansion to help launch the product and allowed him to shape the a guest list at a mansion reception meant for health-care leaders.
The trial was a weeks-long affair that saw the McDonnells’ extravagant lifestyle — paid for by Williams — put on display. It also served to air unflattering details of the couple’s personal life when defense attorneys asserted that their marriage was broken and thus they could not have worked together to solicit Williams’s largesse.
Robert McDonnell was ultimately sentenced to two years in prison and his wife to a year and a day. But they spent no actual time in prison as their appeals moved through the court system. Then the Supreme Court in June threw out Robert McDonnell’s conviction, ruling that jurors were wrongly instructed on the meaning of an “official act” — the thing he was said to have done for Williams — and therefore deserved at least a retrial.
The court’s ruling set a higher bar for prosecuting public corruption and said explicitly that setting up meetings or arranging events for benefactors could not by themselves serve as a public official’s end of a corrupt bargain. In light of the new standard, prosecutors were forced to consider whether they could win the case in a retrial.
Robert McDonnell, who had vigorously asserted his innocence, said in his statement that he appreciated the Justice Department “applying the correct rule of law articulated by the Supreme Court” and “for doing justice for me, my family, my friends, my Commonwealth and its servants, and for all those involved in the democratic process.” But he added that his “wrongful convictions were based on a false narrative and incorrect law.”
“We have the finest law enforcement officers and best justice system in the world in the United States of America,” he said. “It usually gets it right in the end.”
In its statement, McDonnell’s defense team, led by Hank Asbill, John Brownlee and Noel Francisco, said it believed that the Justice Department “brought this case in good faith based on its view of the law as it existed at the time.”
What is next for the former governor remains unclear. He said in his statement: “I know not fully what the future holds as I enter the ‘fourth quarter’ of life. I do know it will be a wonderful adventure, beginning with 4 blessed new grandchildren, a new small business, countless new friends, and multiple new ministry opportunities.”
Janet Kelly, former secretary of the commonwealth and a close friend, said he was “obviously relieved and very grateful, and for the first time in several months he knows what true hope feels like.” She called him “a changed person,” who had grown more empathetic toward others as a result of his own struggles. Kelly said she doubted that he would return to politics although she said he would still do something to help people.
“I think there are bigger and better things in store for him than anything the political sphere would offer,” Kelly said. “He got into politics to help people, but there are plenty of ways to do that outside of politics.”
The case shook Richmond, where until the former governor’s conviction politicians had been allowed to take any gift from lobbyists and others who sought to influence their work. Last year, lawmakers limited what any individual can give to $100 a year.
In a statement, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said he agreed with the decision to not prosecute McDonnell further.
“Governor McDonnell made mistakes and he apologized and paid a significant price,” McAuliffe said. “Moving on from this episode is the right thing to do for the McDonnell family and for the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Robert McDonnell — whose name was the subject of vice-presidential speculation when Mitt Romney was running for the 2012 GOP nomination — undeniably sustained a blow to his own reputation. Even in throwing out his convictions, the Supreme Court called his actions “tawdry.” In a recent Washington Post poll, two-thirds of Virginia adults surveyed said he should not seek elected office again. Even 60 percent of Republicans said they would like to see him remain in private life. A plurality of Virginians said they thought that the Supreme Court was wrong to overturn the verdict.
Tucker Martin, who worked for the former attorney general and governor, said he hoped that the end of the legal saga would bring about a reevaluation on the part of Virginians of McDonnell’s term in office.
“There’s a big part of me that hopes that after a bruising and tiring and sad three years, people will take a fresh look at Bob McDonnell and all he did for Virginia,” Martin said.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in McDonnell’s case set a precedent that could help others accused of public corruption, including Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is awaiting an appeals court ruling in a corruption case; and former New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver (D), who is aiming to overturn his corruption conviction. But some legal analysts say the ruling — and the decision not to prosecute McDonnell in spite of it — was necessary.
“The decision not to prosecute vindicates those who believed all along that this case was an inappropriate extension of the bribery and gratuity statute,” said white-collar criminal defense attorney Jacob Frenkel. “Sometimes it takes the Supreme Court to rein in prosecutorial overreaching, and that is exactly what has occurred here.”
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Bob McDonnell's defense in corruption case topped $10 million. But he might not have to pay it alone.
By Alissa Skelton and Patrick Wilson
The Virginian-Pilot
Sep 9, 2016
The cost to defend former Gov. Bob McDonnell against charges of public corruption topped $10 million, a supporter said Friday.
McDonnell’s sister Maureen McDonnell and others held a news conference at his alma mater, Regent University, to discuss Thursday’s announcement that McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, will not be retried on corruption charges.
The couple still have massive bills.
Cheryl McLeskey, who oversees the fund created in 2013 to pay Bob McDonnell’s legal fees, said supporters will hold fundraising events to raise money to pay back his attorneys for their work.
She said she didn’t know how much money has been paid to the lawyers. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the Restoration Fund, as it’s named, raised $578,335 in contributions since 2013.
“We always believed that he was innocent and, in time, justice prevailed,” said McLeskey, who has been a McDonnell family friend for 30 years.
The former governor and first lady were indicted in January 2014 on allegations they took official action for businessman Jonnie Williams in exchange for more than $170,000 in gifts and off-the-books loans.
A federal jury convicted them in September 2014, but they appealed and in June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jurors were improperly instructed on federal corruption law, meaning Bob McDonnell may have been wrongly convicted.
Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that the Department of Justice would not attempt a retrial.
In an interview Friday on MSNBC, McDonnell said he felt vindicated by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, but he added: “If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t take one gift.”
He said federal prosecutors presented a “false narrative” at his trial: that he arranged meetings for Williams for money. Setting up meetings for donors is “what people do routinely in the body politic,” he said.
“Sure, there was a conviction, but that’s why the United States Supreme Court checks in.”
McDonnell said he supports changes to state law – prompted by his case – limiting gifts elected officials can accept. But he made a curious comment, however, in the interview, saying gifts from Williams he probably shouldn’t have accepted were “fully legal, fully reported.” McDonnell did not report many of the gifts from Williams because he considered him a “personal friend” and gifts from personal friends aren’t required to be disclosed under state law.
Six of McDonnell’s supporters, including McLeskey, state Del. Jason Miyares, Hampton Roads lawyer Randy Singer, The ESG Cos. President Andrea Kilmer and friend Jeff Ainslie, spoke about how relieved they were to hear the case was dropped.
“We knew Bob McDonnell’s character,” Miyares said. “The Bob McDonnell we have known for 10 to 20 years didn’t reconcile with the presentation that was being made in court and oftentimes the media.”
Kilmer, whose company plans to build an 18,000-seat arena near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront by 2018, said she works closely with Bob McDonnell, who has done work with her company in recent years.
“We are overwhelmed with gratitude to know this ordeal is finally over and he can move on,” Kilmer said.
Moving forward, the former governor’s sister said she hoped her brother would fade into normal everyday life and continue working for nonprofit and corporate clients through their consulting firm.
“Right now he just is needing to exhale and enjoy this moment, his vindication that is so sweet after this multi-year ordeal,” she said.
Many of the six supporters said now is not the time to ask whether McDonnell plans to run for another elected office.
“He has got a lot opportunities in the future,” Kilmer said. “I have no doubt he will continue to serve. That’s a decision he will ultimately have to make.”
McLeskey added that many people have told McDonnell he would make a great president.
“He is such a kind, humble, gracious man, that I truly believe that if he were to run today, he would win,” McLeskey said.
Standing behind McLeskey, McDonnell’s sister cringed and let out a nervous laugh at the suggestion.
Singer, an attorney for former first lady Maureen McDonnell, said he is glad they will be able to move forward with their lives without corruption trials looming.
He said Maureen McDonnell was so happy when she heard the news that she cried.
“There is a difference between misjudgments and doing anything illegal, betraying the trust of the commonwealth,” he said. “They have maintained their innocence throughout. We believe that claim has been vindicated.”
http://pilotonline.com/news/government/politics/bob-mcdonnell-s-defense-in-corruption-case-topped-million-but/article_39b553c0-5641-539f-b976-ba65133c74c5.html