This is a big week in the drama of the charges brought by Obama’s team of federal prosecutors: 28 counts filed against former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen. Their sin? Granting meetings to someone financially connected to the McDonnell family without “Authorized by Terry McAuliffe” written on the invitation.
If you’re Governor McAuliffe, you can sell meetings with yourself or staff to any check-writer at anytime. But Obama’s prosecutors don’t mind that.
The judge will decide whether to separate the trials of Bob and Maureen and which charges stand and which do not.
Here’s the problem. Prosecutors who oppose the judge throwing out any charges volunteered to drop 27 of the charges if McDonnell would play ball (a form of bribery itself, methinks?).
McDonnell turned down the “bribe” from the feds.
Now prosecutors are in the position of publicly defending charges they offered to drop. Not unusual in legal circles, but damning in political ones.
This is the fork in the road. If the judge sides with prosecutors, public perception will turn on McDonnell even more than it has, and McDonnell’s team better dig in for an uphill climb.
But if the judge started deleting charges like Jamie Farr on The Gong Show, the public will side with McDonnell.
You’ll hear amplified accusations that this was an election-year strategy from the President who unleashed the IRS in a Nixonian attack on conservative action groups. Obama certainly didn’t want Virginia to be governed by Ken Cuccinelli, who sued the Obama administration more than almost anyone. Systematic leaks from the Justice Department to the Washington Post happened flawlessly throughout the year, and suddenly stopped once T-Mac took the oath.
Heck, if all the charges get dropped, I’d expect calls for a special prosecutor to look into suspicions of political character assassination through the Justice Department.
Of course, the judge might go Solomon and throw out a few and keep a few. That would be disappointing. I hope the judge gives us something definitive.
One way or the other.
