Here’s my take on the McDonnell corruption trial. This is not reporting — I am not in Richmond, and I have to rely on the newspaper stories and the TV broadcasts that I see for my facts. A good take on things can be found in the Washington Post and the Richmond-Times Dispatch, from which most of the facts discussed here come. In addition, Charlottesville TV observers will find Maria Hallas’ coverage on WVIR good — she was a lawyer for 10 years before going into journalism.
So as we go through this trial, I’ll be commenting from news reports, augmented with court documents that I can access online. And along the way, I hope I can offer a few insights into what the lawyers are doing and why.
Yesterday they picked the jury, and today they got down to business.
The opening statements got the most attention.
The federal bribery statute is usually thought of as requiring a quid pro quo, and all three words are important. You need:
- A gift to a public official
- As a result of which the public official
- Does something for a private person that he wouldn’t otherwise have done in the exercise of his public duties.
It has been pretty clear that an important defense argument is going to be that Bob McDonnell was just doing what every governor does — he tries to bring jobs to Virginia, and he acts as a booster for Virginia industries. And if along the way the CEO gives the Governor a gift, what’s the problem with that?
A secondary, but related, defense argument is that Jonnie Williams was a friend of the McDonnells. Is the U.S. government going to claim that a politician can’t have friends who give him gifts or do him favors?
Assistant United States Attorney Jessica Aber told the jury that McDonnell had a “duty not to sell the power and the influence of his office to the highest bidder.” But Aber told jurors that the McDonnells in fact did just that, taking more than $150,000 in cash, loans, vacations, golf clubs, an Inaugural gown for Maureen, and a shopping trip for Maureen to New York.
What Williams got in return was that Bob and Maureen McDonnell served as peddlers of his Anatabloc “vitamin supplements.” The McDonnells hosted a product launch at the Governor’s Mansion. Maureen flew down to Florida to make a pitch for Anatabloc. I talked to a friend who attended a social gathering that — unbeknownst to the guests — turned in to what amounted to a Tupperware party for Anatabloc, with Maureen McDonnell as the person hawking the goods.
Aber told the jury that what Bob McDonnell did for Star Scientific went further, though — McDonnell hosted a meeting of university researchers at the Governor’s Mansion where he asked them to study Williams’s products, presumably with the hope that they would find the supplements to have some health value. Williams wanted to get the state health insurance plan to include Anatabloc as something they would cover, but the health officials were balking; he complained to McDonnell that he couldn’t get a meeting with the right person, and McDonnell personally asked a high-ranking health official meet with Williams on “less than 12 hours notice.” McDonnell allowed Williams to invite doctors to a mansion event, presumably to allow Williams to schmooze with people who could help Star Scientific. None of these acts is criminal, but would they have been done if Williams hadn’t given the McDonnells $150,000?
Bob McDonnell’s lawyer, John Brownlee (former United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia), made it clear that the defense was going to hang on Bob McDonnell’s character. He told the jury that McDonnell would testify in his own defense (don’t expect Maureen to testify…). “He was not hiding anything before — he will not hide anything now,” Brownlee said. “He will not hide from their false allegations.” Brownlee talked about McDonnell’s life in public service – military service, state prosecutor, state delegate, attorney general and governor. As governor, Brownlee said, McDonnell worked 14 to 16 hours a day, “without a hint of scandal.”
Meanwhile, Brownlee revealed that not only had Jonnie Williams gotten immunity from prosecution for bribing McDonnell; he also got immunity for an unrelated $10 million fraud — and testifying against the McDonnells was his big get-out-of-jail-free card.
But the real news was in the opening by Maureen McDonnell’s lawyer, William Burck, who brought the case down to the level of a soap opera. The McDonnell marriage was virtually broken by the time that McDonnell was elected Governor — too many hours, days, weeks spent chasing political office, not enough time making enough money. Then, Maureen met Jonnie Williams, who paid attention to her in ways that Bob didn’t. She developed what Burck called a “crush” on Jonnie, calling him “her favorite playmate.” You’ve probably all seen this on Days of Our Lives — work-a-holic husband, wife feels neglected, wife finds man who will pay attention to her and help her feel pretty, etc. Apparently the story will be that Williams and Maureen never got in bed together, though I suspect that many jurors will believe that they did (“my favorite playmate”?).
So why is this a defense? There are a few themes that this suggests, which I expect to hear more of in coming weeks:
- Bob and Maureen couldn’t have been conspiring, because they were barely talking. In fact, Brownlee said, at one point Maureen told Bob that she “hated” him.
- Jonnie Williams was cultivating Maureen for reasons that had nothing to do with access to Bob. (If they go there, it would not surprise me if they really let the “they were probably sleeping together” rumors run rampant.)
- Maureen was cultivating Jonnie for reasons that had nothing to do with the gifts — she wanted attention.
- A conspiracy is an agreement to violate the law, and there was never a “meeting of the minds” between Bob, Maureen and Jonnie. They were each doing things for their own legal reasons, and while there may have been a quid, and there may have been a quo, there was no pro. Bob didn’t do favors for Jonnie because of the money.
There were three witnesses called today:
- Ryan Greer, of Seasonings Catering, was called to talk about the 2011 wedding reception that he catered for Cailin McDonnell-Young, Bob and Maureen’s daughter.
- Cailin testified that she had insisted on paying for all of the expenses of the wedding herself, but then someone (Maureen? Jonnie?) decided that Jonnie would pay for the reception. There was a check from Jonnie (new reports are somewhat sloppy on whether it was payable to the McDonnells or to the caterer) for $15,000 for the reception. What I had not heard until today was that the caterers were overpaid, and so wrote a check back to the McDonnells for what has been described in news reports as either $7,000 or more than $4,000, and only refunded it after the investigation started.
- Jerri Fulkerson, Jonnie Williams’ Executive Assistant at Star Scientific, began to testify, but had not concluded her testimony by the end of the day.
Trial will resume tomorrow with Fulkerson on the stand.
