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'Virginia Way' Sounds a Lot Like 'Chicago Way'

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

When their far-fetched marriage-gone-bad defense failed to save former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, from guilty verdicts in their corruption trial, I could not help but wonder: Why didn't they take a plea deal when they had the chance?

Federal authorities had offered to avoid charging the state's first lady if the then-governor pleaded guilty to one felony fraud charge, according to news reports.

But the governor rejected the offer, and the couple was jointly charged with trading on his office to help businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and his company Star Scientific to sell a nutritional supplement called Anatabloc, made from tobacco derivatives. Sounds yummy.

Instead, both McDonnells were found guilty Thursday by a federal jury in Richmond -- on eleven corruption-related counts against the former governor and eight against his wife.

They could face decades in federal prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 6, although their actual sentences are likely to fall far short of that.

But accepting the offer probably would have fallen even shorter. It also would have spared the McDonnells and their children from the humiliating soap opera that unfolded in their bad-marriage defense, also covered as a "throw-your-wife-under-the-bus" strategy.

 

For nearly two years, authorities charged, the McDonnells used Williams as a personal ATM for loans and gifts of money, clothes, golf fees and equipment, trips and private plane rides totaling more than $165,000.

In exchange, the McDonnells allegedly worked together to sell the prestige of the office that, as Virginians are quick to point out, once was occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.

Their defense? Lawyers argued that the two were barely on speaking terms, so the governor could not have known that Williams had paid for such gifts as, for example, a $15,000 high-fashion New York shopping spree for Maureen or a $6,500 Rolex watch she gave her husband as a Christmas present.

Nor could he have known about actions she took to help Williams promote his dietary product, the defense claimed, in exchange for more than $165,000 in luxury gifts and loans.

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(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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