Today’s witnesses were, for the most part, former gubernatorial aides who were called to testify about how inappropriate they thought all of the Star Scientific/Jonnie Williams business was. They were all talking about the quid in the quid pro quo; Dr. John Clure, an endocrinologist at VCU Medical School and Director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research, testified about the quo.
The government’s case has three elements:
- Quid — Did Williams give McDonnell a gift (or loan or some other consideration)
- Pro — In an effort to persuade McDonnell in his official capacity
- Quo — To take some action as Governor on his behalf.
One of Jonnie Williams’ key claims was that his business strategy was to get to the Governor. He testified that because the Governor “controls the medical schools”, the Governor could order the medical schools to study Anatabloc, so that it could be established that Anatabloc was a wonder substance. (Anyone who knows anything about medical schools knows that that is ridiculous, but leave that aside for a moment.)
Dr. Clure’s testimony, elicited by the prosecution, was that he had been invited to a Star Scientific event at the governor’s mansion in August 2011, timed to coincide with the introduction of Anatabloc to the market. Clure thought that it was an “official government function” — the invitation to the lunch came embossed with the official seal of Virginia and the names of both the governor and the first lady. He said Bob McDonnell did not speak at the lunch. At the end of the event, Clure received a $25,000 check from Star Scientific made out to the VCU Medical Center, to fund a request to try to obtain grant money for a study. (Note to Jonnie Williams — if you want to give money to the VCU Medical Center, there are more appropriate channels than that.) Clure was told the study would be funded by the Virginia Tobacco Commission. (The Tobacco Commission cannot give money to Star Scientific, but it can give money to non-profits like VCU. I assume that someone will bring this check into evidence.)
This testimony didn’t get as much attention from the media as the testimony of the Governor’s aides, but in some ways it was more important.
The whole problem for the government is that there is no indication that Governor McDonnell actually DID anything for having received loans and gifts. If a quid pro quo is required (as the United States Supreme Court has pretty much said), what did the Governor do in return for the money and the Rolex? The testimony was that a couple of “courtesy” phone calls were made on behalf of Star Scientific to various medical schools, or to employees of the Department of Health, but no one has yet suggested any flagrant misconduct in this vein.
Some of the evidence today had the feel of “Yeah, we knew that Jonnie Williams wanted McDonnell to do stuff for him, and we kind of humored him with some polite e-mails and a few polite phone calls, but we didn’t really do much for him.”
If I think of a Governor getting involved in bribery, I think of Rod Blagojevich (admittedly a high bar). Blagojevich was taped offering a Senate seat for sale — “This is a f#$%ing valuable thing, I’m not just going to give it away for f#$%in’ nothin’.”
There doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that Bob McDonnell called in an aide and yelled at him, “Get on this Anatabloc thing. And find some damn researcher some place who will f@#$ing study this. It’s important to me.”
So today’s gubernatorial aides all testified, in essence, “Yes, we talked with Williams, but we didn’t actually do anything productive for him.” Dr. Clure testified, in essence, that “No one at VCU did anything for Star Scientific, and the Governor never called us up to ask us to do anything for them.”
The government’s case is going to come down to appearances and inferences. And the defense will be, “Yes, it looks bad, but it wasn’t illegal.” Today’s evidence seemed to advance both narratives.
