Former Gov. Bob McDonnell will learn his fate in federal Judge James Spencer’s courtroom today.
But the fate of all Americans is what’s really at stake.
McDonnell has been found guilty of honest services fraud – where the jury says he devised “a scheme and artifice to defraud the citizens of Virginia of their right to the honest services of the governor of Virginia through bribery.” Associated with the larger first count are three specific counts that show McDonnell taking loans from Star Scientific’s Jonnie Williams.
McDonnell has also been found guilty of “unlawfully using the governor’s official power to extort property from Williams and Star Scientific.” There are six specific instances that the government has said prove McDonnell’s corruption.
At the end of the day, what the government is really saying is that the governor didn’t do his job in order to favor Star Scientific, but at the same time, also tried to extort money from Star Scientific. Talk about convoluted!
At the heart of the matter is a bottle of snake oil (dietary supplements made of tobacco) called Anatabloc.
There are exactly zero bottles of the stuff on any druggist’s shelf in Virginia. Meaning that it wasn’t fast-tracked, approved, or given any preferential treatment by the government to get to market.
The governor never used his office to do anything that remotely construed an official act for the company.
There is no doubt that accepting $177k in loans and gifts is a staggering number. But was it extorted? Did the McDonnells force Williams to hand this money over or else? Did they ever say, “Jonnie, if you give us this money, we’ll fast track your product?” Did they ever put pressure on Secretary of Health and Human Services Bill Hazel to say, “You better help my friend, Jonnie, and Anatabloc, or we’ll fire you and replace you with someone who will do what we want?” Did the governor ever dip into the massive Governor’s Opportunity Fund account – specifically designed for the executive to help develop business in Virginia – and dole out dollars to Star Scientific to advance the product?
No! None of this happened!
Everything that you would expect would be in the governor’s power to show arm twisting, extortion, or actual corruption never happened in this case.
What McDonnell is guilty of is a massive failure of judgement and a lapse of ethics. And, if anything, it is clear that Williams is the instigator of trying to corrupt the process (probably a significant reason the prosecution gave him immunity).
McDonnell took advantage of Williams’ ploy. The former army officer and attorney general had to have known Williams’ was trying to buy him off, and McDonnell was all too willing to play along, allowing Williams to keep writing the checks.
But is that bribery? Is that extortion? Did Williams’ actions prevent the governor from presiding over one of the best states in the country for business, balanced budgets, opening rest areas that were previously closed, passing the first transportation reform measure in decades – in other words, did we not get “honest service” from Bob McDonnell?
What we’re seeing from the prosecution and Judge Spencer is an exceptionally broad interpretation of the law. When you consider what the Supreme Court has already determined in McCutcheon and Citizens United regarding money in politics and Virginia’s nonexistent ethics laws, what Judge Spencer and the prosecution are doing to me is, at worst, ex post facto interpretation of the law, or, at best, legislating from the bench.
“Sending a message” to McDonnell and current and future elected officials is not the job of our government’s judicial system. Enforcing the law and meting out justice is.
In this case, anything less than Governor McDonnell’s freedom is not justice. And if a governor can’t win over the judicial system in something as clear as this, what chance do the rest of us have?
Update: See the live blog on WVEC and the Washington Post.
