In opening statements, the prosecution promised the jury that they would hear about highly suspicious timing between gifts and loans and Bob McDonnell making some phone calls or sending e-mails to help Star Scientific market Anatabloc. The defense promised the jury that they would hear that Bob and Maureen McDonnell didn’t talk about anything, that their marriage was shot, that Maureen had a crush on Jonnie Williams, and that Bob was so busy working as Governor and possible Vice Presidential candidate that he wasn’t paying attention to what Maureen and Jonnie were up to so he could not have been guilty of any “official act” committed as a result of the gifts and loans.
Looking back at the evidence from the first two weeks, here is the picture that has emerged:
- Jonnie Williams was a conniver, a courtier who hoped to turn his position at the First Lady’s elbow into access to and favors from the Governor;
- Maureen McDonnell was desperately in debt, she had maxed out her credit cards, and she couldn’t afford to buy a dress for Bob’s inauguration;
- Maureen was a terrible person to work for, and some of her aides thought that she was mentally unstable;
- The McDonnells’ marriage didn’t seem to be that bad (though some of the people who testified to that were talking about how things were in the first part of McDonnell’s term, and may not have seen it if the marriage deteriorated later in the term);
- The McDonnells’ aides — both official and political — saw what Jonnie Williams was up to and tried to keep him at a distance, but they couldn’t;
- Bob’s aides tried to get him to get Maureen and his kids to stop dealing with Jonnie Williams, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t;
- Whatever may have been going on in the Capitol, Bob had no control of what was happening in the Executive Mansion;
- By 2012, with the McDonnells still in desperate financial shape, the only way that they could get the money necessary to live the lifestyle to which they wanted to become accustomed, and to keep current on mortgages on real estate investments, was to borrow money from Jonnie Williams;
- Both Williams and the McDonnells knew that what they were doing was at least potentially politically embarrassing, if not necessarily illegal;
- Both Williams and the McDonnells tried to keep their respective staffs from knowing about their relationship;
- The loans that Jonnie Williams made to the McDonnells in May, 2011, and March, 2012, came right after a series of e-mails and phone calls between Jonnie and Bob, and right around the time that Bob tried to get the Virginia health bureaucracy to do some things to help Star Scientific;
- No one with any science background seems to think much of Anatabloc, so the Virginia health bureaucracy pretty much humored the Governor but did nothing to help Star Scientific;
- There doesn’t seem to be any e-mail or phone call that makes clear any quid pro quo (or we would have heard about it through Jonnie Williams);
- Bob never tried very hard to get the bureaucracy to help Star Scientific;
- Bob never actually accomplished anything for Star Scientific;
- Bob knew that Maureen had bought Star Scientific stock, that it was losing money as an investment, and that she bought more anyway.
It seems highly likely that all of the prosecution themes are out; they have told the court that they expect to conclude their evidence this coming week, and I’d be surprised if there was much evidence that deviated from the picture that I described above. If you have a 5 week trial, you don’t save a new story line for the end.
It’s hard to know just where the defense will actually go with its own witnesses, so it is possible that some other story lines may emerge once the McDonnells start calling witnesses. And of course, we have been promised that Bob McDonnell will testify. I expect that that the defense will attempt to prove:
- That Bob was trying to promote any and all Virginia businesses;
- That that is the job of a Virginia Governor;
- That during the time of the worst recession in 75 years, he was doing everything he could to bring jobs to Virginia and to promote Virginia industry, and he would have done these things regardless of who was letting him use a Ferrari;
- That he was trying to hide these transactions with Williams to avoid political embarrassment, not because he thought they were illegal;
- That every phone call he made was entirely consistent with what he and any other Governor would have done;
- That the product launch lunch was not an official act, but a political act, paid for by a political committee;
- That when Maureen flew down to Florida with Jonnie Williams to plug Anatabloc, she was not taking any “official action,” and that all of the other things that seemed tacky and unseemly were just Maureen acting unofficially.
Stay tuned.
