The Senate held a vote on gubernatorial appointees on this snowy Monday, and among those under consideration was Boyd Marcus to the Virginia ABC board. Senator Mark Obenshain sought to strike Marcus’s name from the list (again) but his amendment failed on a party line vote (with John Watkins absent).
There’s little suspense in the Senate about the final outcome. Marcus will be approved. Barring a complete collapse of discipline, the House will not agree, and Mr. Marcus will have to get by without a lucrative sinecure.
If the RPV has its way, however, matters won’t end there. Having (unsurprisingly) gotten the cold shoulder to its earlier request of Attorney General Mark Herring to look into whether the Marcus appointment was a quid pro quo, the party has sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney for Virginia’s Eastern District asking it to investigate:
I write today to ask that your office open an investigation into Governor Terry McAuliffe’s appointment of Boyd Marcus to the ABC Board. This appointment, along with recent revelations about how Mr. Marcus’s endorsement of then candidate McAuliffe came to be, raise the troubling possibility that Governor McAuliffe bought this endorsement in the form of this appointment, essentially selling a state office.
Familiar ground. But then there is this:
Your predecessor actively pursued former Governor Bob McDonnell in a case where there were alleged questions as to whether the “quo” existed in exchange for “quid.” Indeed, your office brought an indictment against Governor McDonnell in the name of rooting out public corruption. A reasonable analysis of the facts surrounding Governor McAuliffe’s ABC Board appointments will likely show an obvious quid pro quo.
The task facing your office is simple. If you and your staff open an investigation into Governor McAuliffe’s actions regarding his appointments to the Virginia ABC Board, Virginians can rest easy, knowing that you and your team are non-partisan, public servants who simply pursue justice and public integrity for the betterment of our Commonwealth.
If your office does not open an investigation into Governor McAuliffe, Virginians will likely assume that your office has become yet another politicized branch of what many believe is an already highly politicized Justice Department. Indeed, failure to investigate Governor McAuliffe’s actions would raise serious questions about the indictment of Governor McDonnell.
Herring’s predecessor as Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, also actively pursued an investigation of possible quids, pros and quos relating to Bob McDonnell and Jonnie Williams.
Proving a quid pro quo will be very difficult. The State Police dropped the matter late last year, others who may have had something to say about dodgy behavior by then-candidate McAuliffe have stopped talking and the case has grown stale.
But we shall see whether the U.S. Attorney responds to being pushed.
