Virginia has been rocked by the indictment of Robert F. “Bob” McDonnell, a former state attorney general and his wife, Maureen, on corruption charges. The couple is accused of accepting loans, gifts, vacations and the use of a private plane from Jonnie Williams Sr., CEO of Star Scientific, a Virginia-based dietary supplement company. Like many in Virginia, I was floored by the sheer size of the gifts that exceeded $140,000. For a person who clearly aspired to national office, it was not just potentially crime but just plain stupid. Yet, I did not view the indictment as overwhelming in the proof of an actual crime due to the lack of any clear use of official power or authority to benefit Williams.
The record is pretty damning of the couple which is depicted as eager to receive gifts. In one email, Maureen McDonnell writes to an aide who is concerned about an offer by Williams to buy her inaugural gown. She states “We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this Inaugural is killing us!! I need answers and I need help, and I need to get this done.” She clearly reached the wrong answer when she later took a “rain check” and accepted free purchases from Williams on a shopping binge to New York, including $11,000 for clothes at Oscar de la Renta and $5,685 in items at Louis Vuitton and $2,604 at Bergdorf Goodman.
McDonnell is facing 14 count indictment, including charges of honest-services wire fraud, obtaining property under color of official right and making false statements to a financial institution in loan applications. The indictment alleges that the McDonnells conspired to “legitimize, promote, and obtain research studies” for Star Scientific products.” Frankly, that seems a tad weak and reminds me of the case against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. In the latter’s successful prosecution, I never saw the clear crime in the form of an actual selling of the Illinois Senate seat vacated by President Obama.
The indictment details acts that are common among politicians like attending Star company parties and allowing the Mansion to be used for a launch party. He is also accused facilitating meetings with state officials. None of that is good from an ethics or a judgment perspective, but the threshold for a crime is generally set a bit higher in my view. The most conventional claims (as least for Washington) are the coverup allegations. Those are the charges that swept the former first lady into the indictment. The government accuses her of lying to investigators and misrepresenting the source of luxury clothes. In Washington such charges are common place in scandals, often resulting in charges under 18 U.S.C. 1001 for any false statement given to investigators. Those are the charges that I would be most concerned with as a defense attorney. Even when you knock down the corruption charges on the elements of the offense, a jury can find an easy compromise verdict in these false statement allegations.
McDonnell, while expressing regret for accepting the gifts, insisted that “I did nothing illegal for Mr. Williams in exchange for what I believed was his personal generosity and friendship. I never promised—and Mr. Williams and his company never received—any government benefit of any kind from me or my administration.”
Despite the disgust that I feel in reading some of these emails and records of purchases, I still find the official acts in return for the gifts to be fairly weak. That link might be strengthened at trial and a jury is certainly not going to like the shopping trips to New York. However, after years of investigation, I expected a stronger nexus between the gifts and actual use of McDonnell’s office.
Bron:
“How come the free pass? That seems out of character for you. Are you mellowing in your old age?”
***********************
Maybe so, but I think it’s more about the degree of punishment required to deter this type of sleaze. It’s a big hit to be the first governor in the history of the Commonwealth to be indicted much less convicted. Especially so for someone with –at one time – a bright political future. McDonnell was not an ideologue and did quite a few good things for the state. He backed down from that insipid trans-vaginal ultrasound bill and even took on his party over the transportation bill and Medicaid expansion.
If you are going to vilify him for abusing his office can’t you take into account when he honored it as well? Life’s full of gray. Public service is not easy or lucrative — look at the peanuts we’re talking about here and McDonnell’s pre-election financial position — and some deference seems in order when the alleged quid-pro-quo is fairly vaporous, indirect, and initiated and controlled by the governor’s wife.
Juris:
You’re conflating professional ethics and criminal conduct. Criminal conduct is the lowest common denominator of acceptable conduct and is the baseline of behavior. Ethics implies required conduct above the baseline and is premised on according the person so obligated with certain privileges unavailable to most people. Like requiring lawyers to put the interests of their clients ahead of their own. regular folks can deal with other people at arms length; lawyers can’t do so with their clients.
“The indictment details acts that are common among politicians like attending Star company parties and allowing the Mansion to be used for a launch party. He is also accused facilitating meetings with state officials. None of that is good given the gifts, but the threshold for a crime is generally set a bit higher in my view.”
Begs the question: Why is threshold for a crime not lower to include this type of conduct? Politicians should be required to avoid the APPEARANCE of impropriety or using the office for personal benefit, regardless of whether they promised something in return. This type of conduct is at the core of what is wrong in our political system.
Mespo:
How come the free pass? That seems out of character for you. Are you mellowing in your old age?
Why cant politicians live like the rest of us? The whole thing smells. Even if he didnt break the law, he broke something. His career is ruined but maybe a little jail time for him and wife would make future politicians afraid to do this sort of thing.
Our politicians should not be going into office middle class and coming out wealthy. If they want to cash in on their celebrity after they leave office, fine, charge $100k or more for speaking engagements. But while in office you should not be able to profit from that position. And you should certainly not play favorites with businesses.
Just the appearance of proximity to the governor helped Star Scientific and Jonnie Williams personally. How much pull do you think Williams had among his circle and outside it? How much did he gain from his association with the governor? Did he use it to open doors and grow his business? What did he offer to friends of his in terms of access to Gov. Bob?
We should only elect Governors who are single. Whether male or female, the partner seems to often be a bad choice and not just an echo. Y’all remember that phrase: A Choice Not An Echo! Who was the candidate?
Malicious and political prosecution? Na, not in this country.
The Rights of Man
Since the people do not care, the time will come again,
time when forced to make a change, a time to rearrange.
Most will wait till there’s no choice, confused about
the fight, listening to the same old band, failing to protect
the rights of man.
America, Iraq an Israel, have failed to do what’s
right, choosing force for the fight, a gun instead
of what’s right.
Battling for the wrong reasons, confused about the fight,
all sides claiming in the name of God, they’ve got God
caught up in the fight.
The time is now to make a change but most people do
not care. They’d rather fight than do what’s right, because they
don’t understand.
And they’ll fight, fight, fight, for God and country
but war is seldom right. Historically what the fight is for, is power, money and the spoils of war. Copyright ©2008 Harry K. Robinson
There is an arrogance of power that causes people to act stupidly. It is not relegated to politicians, although they are most culpable. Athletes, entertainers, etc. also are taught by this culture that they are “special” and above rebuke. It’s heartening to see, but for every prosecution there are thousands of instances where nothing is done. At least this corrupt politician was charged. Hopefully he’ll be convicted and receive a righteous sentence.
What Darren Smith said.
When the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln it had ideals. Those ended with the end of Reconstruction. We had a brief moment with Teddy Roosevelt. Then the slide into RepubliCan. After Ike it became the party of the Southern Strategy or “bigot this” and “bigot that”, and the RepubliCon Party. They conned us for the past forty years but now with the likes of McDonnell it is Can. I Can, You Can, and with our forefather Lee Atwater, We all Can. I hope this guy beats the charges. We need corporations such as Star Scientific to lead us not into temptation but into the Golden Era of RepubliCan and not Con. Con is for Con Edison, Boehner, Ronnie Raygun and the like. But not like Ike. We don’t hear about Ike anymore. ” I Like Ike” was the bumper sticker then. Now its “I Like My 401K”.
I think something that is pertinent here is would this governor had provided such accomodation to this company if he was not given any “gifts”? And did any other Virginia company that did not provide any gifts get an equal level of advocacy?
mespo727272:
As a Virginian, I think you have it right. I have never cared for McDonnell, but from the evidence so far it appears that what he did, basically, was try to boost a Virginia company — which, absent the gifts, would have been a proper use of his office.
Doesn’t it seem like Scalia is getting a bit more reasonable in his old age, at least on certain issues, while Kennedy continues to move farther and farther rightward. Kennedy was a staunch conservative from the beginning, but he has always seemed to be less result oriented and less tethered to rigid, right wing ideology than the other four “conservative” (read: right wing extremist) justices on this court. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s continuous movement toward the farthest edges of the extreme right is especially frightening because he is currently the only bulwark that’s standing in the way of Roe v Wade’s extinction. One final thought that is also terribly disturbing: Why did senate Democrats, who finally jettisoned the judicial filibuster as they obviously had to do, nevertheless make a glaring exception for Supreme Court appointments? If Obama gets to appoint one or more Supreme Court nominees in this, his final term, there is no way in the world that our current senate, still armed with the right to filibuster Supreme Court appointments, would allow confirmation of even a distinguished, ultra well qualified, noncontroversial moderate Obama nominee, much less the solid, aggressive liberal this court needs so badly to counterbalance at least some of the right wing activism. http://gravatar.com/samaxe
Justice Holmes:
If incidences such as alleged against this former governor and his wife are abundant in our federal elected government, the United States is in an extremely dire state of affairs.
Just because they ALL do it doesn’t make it right or legal. But it is amazing how little he took.
Politicians take millions from corporations and it is understood that this money buys legislation and influence. We need to see more prosecutions not less.
I have reviewed the entirety of the indictment and I have to disagree that there was not suffient nexus to tie the gifts from the CEO of the health care company and the official actions of the governor’s office.
First, as far as ethics go, I was purely astounded at the amount of sleaze that was resident in the governor’s office especially with regard to the first lady. It is unconsciounable. That aside we have to look at this from a ciriminal point of view.
For the purpose of indictment, two things are here. First, it is to establish a probable cause type of burden and second not all the information needs to be conveyed to the Grand Jury, just sufficient information to establish probable cause to indict based upon the elements of violating federal law. It had been stated numerous times in the indictment that not all the evidence was provided to the grand jury.
To me it was borderline the first lady wasn’t charged with insider trading violations. But essentially with these types of prosecutions, an element of the crime is that the inside information was used to obtain a financial gain or avoid a financial loss and that the information was obtained directly from managment of a company and not as a direct result of only information that was available to the general public. instead her transferrance of the stock in question was to avoid the publicity and disclosure requirements as required by Virginia public disclosure laws. But it could be inferred that the first lady and ultimately her governor husband invested in the health care company for two reasons. First, it was to facilitate goodwill with the CEO of the company in the tie of the influence in Virginia state government in exchange for gifts and other consideration for facilitating this and the appointments made to universities and medical facilities. But, more importantly, one could derive that a financial gain was expected by providing the health care company with extra help fron the goverment to approve and legitimize the health care company’s product through the use of her husband’s position in government to make this happen.
Furthmore the first lady requested the stock broker cause a sale of the stock of the health care company at the end of the year to avoid the public disclosure requirements of virginia law. She sold the entirety of her holdings in the health care company in one year, to avoid the reporting requirements, and then in January she repurchased stock in the health care company with the same amount on dollars that the stock was formerly sold at and with the January purchase she acquired more shares of the stock as the price of the stock on the market declined. It could be inferred, though weakly, she obtained more shares of the stock as a result of her avoiding a reporting requirement of Virginia.
At the core level one has to understand what consideration was offered by the governor and the CEO of a company. The first lady made much mention of statements of such as how dire her financial situation was such as how much in debt they were only to be rescued with sub-prime rate loans or non-interest bearing loans made personally by the CEO of a corporation that was vying for a favorable position the office of the governor could, through his office, arrange for meetings, placement of reasearch with universities, and entreating the health care commissioners’ office to approve the medication for which the CEO’s company was trying to market. It becomes more clear when looking at other businesses or more specifically other health care companies within Virginia that those other businesses were not provided the same access to the facilities and advocacy of the governor’s office, much less that the other companies did not provide the governor or the first lady with renumerations in consideration for this favorable influence.
Later the first lady attempted, according to the indictment, to hide further assets by transferrence during round two of moving the stock around by spliting the shares among their five children which would make the remainder of the shares under the public disclosure rate to again hide from public disclosure the stock held in the company that she and her husband received gifts to and contemporaneously offered additional benefit and access for the health care company.
Contemporaneously with, especially the first lady, and the governor’s hint-hint-nudge-nudge-wink approach to obtaining gifts, loans, expensive clothing and the likes from the CEO of the health care company, the governor and the first lady made arrangements to provide additional access to the company in the hope of obtaining process that would facilitate additional sales to them.
The governor is alleged to have personally recommended the product to health officials in the state in order to save the state money due to the product’s health benefits that are less costly to the state, even after the federal FDA had not approved the product to treat various ailments, but yet after a process of this cozy relationship between the CEO of the health care company the governor attempted to create a market for the health care company to sell to the state, when the governor is not alleged in the indictment to have recommended other, proven health care money savers, such as generic drugs, that were not associated with the payments to facilitate influence.
Some might argue that the case might be weak due to the lack of direct instructions by the CEO such as “I will give you $50,000.00 if you arrange for my product to be listed on the state’s self insured pharmaceutical formulary.” Bribery does not necessarily fall as clearly defined as this. If it was once incident I could see this defense but given the pattern of gift resulting in consideration for influence and seeking approval of using state facilities and position to make a market for the health care company’s product in which the governor and his wife’s were shareholders it becomes rather obvious in my view.
What happens in trial I agree is another issue. More or less convincing evidence will be tried. But as far as an indictment goes I believe there is suffient cause to charge the defendants as in the indictment. There was ample evidence that a pattern of deception and coverup was replete with the actions of the first lady and the governor and the completeness went so far as to illegally not state the debts by the governor and his wife to the CEO of this company in a refinance of their properties on a Uniform loan application (a potential felony violation of federal law) and when Law enforcement then investigated the first lady for these loans and the governor then went to amend the loan application, when the heat began to ask questions about the loan, to avoid the crime the governor attempted to mitigate the false application by then disclosing part of the loan from the CEO. So depending on which way the governor or first lady percieved the direction the regulatory or investigatory arms of the federal and the state government was focused they changed their approach to avoid being prosecuted and this was not in any sense an ordinary reallocation of personal assets to speculate on changing markets.
In my opinion the evidence is sufficient and convincing to support an indictment.
Who spends money like that and doesn’t get something in return? There’s more to this.
There Are 85 People Who Are As Wealthy As Half The WORLD, Oxfam Reports – Guess how they influence governments?
Even state governments.
“The indictment details acts that are common among politicians like attending Star company parties and allowing the Mansion to be used for a launch party.” – JT
Perhaps it is time to change direction and change common to rare as it should be.
its the same old story of.. do what you’re told or else by the bankers who really run the corporation…. this is a warning of what will happen to him and his wife if they dont get in line with the rest….. as Jonathan said the charges are weak. its just a show and prove that they can and will be publicly and personally destroyed… and the minute they give in and accept their masters. these charges will go away and we won’t hear another word… unless they once again attempt to step out of line and no do what their told!!!!!!!!!
ask bush, clinton and obama they know all about bogus charges like this.. its put out there to show them the peoples reaction and what can and will happen..
It’s an old story and not particularly unique. Career politician with no money and lots of power coupled with ambitious and privileged wife connects with businessman with little political power and lots of money. Add to that the needs of kids in school and a failing investment market and the pressure to seek a financial safe harbor in the storm becomes irresistible. Though I disagree with Bob’s politics, as a man and father I feel sorry for him. I hope he beats the charges. He suffered enough and giving the public a pound of flesh for doing nothing that violated the prevailing law of Virginia seems overkill to me.