Maureen Williams and Jonnie Williams. Photo credit: Daily Progress
by James A. Bacon
Jury selection for the trial of former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen begins today. The 43-page federal indictment against the former First Family piles up a mass of detail to present a devastating portrait. Particularly damaging are revelations that the McDonnells intervened behind the scenes to help their friend and patron Jonnie R. Williams Sr., CEO of Star Scientific, in his efforts to establish research relationships with the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Opinion seems universal, even among those inclined to defend McDonnell, that the First Family’s behavior recounted in the indictments are beyond the pale — not only insufferably “tacky,” as a lawyer friend of mine put it, but downright shameful. However, before we convict the former governor of corruption, let us pause a moment and catch our breath. The indictment represents a cherry picking of the facts most damaging to the McDonnells. Let us also remember that the McDonnells will seek to establish a different narrative. At this point, we don’t know what that narrative will be. But whatever it is, I will hazard a guess that it will reveal a lot of information that has yet to surface about the relationship between the McDonnells on the one hand and Jonnie Williams Sr., CEO of Star Scientific, and his wife Celeste on the other.
The indictment consists of a recitation of facts shorn of context. The feds charge that the events described amount to “a scheme to use Robert McDonnell’s official position as the Governor of Virginia to enrich the defendants and their family members.” They list a series of events and communications in chronological order, creating the strong impression that favors Williams performed for the McDonnells were directly related to favors the McDonnells performed for Williams. That may be an accurate impression. But it also might be a deceptive one. The way in which the information is presented precludes the possibility that anyone was acting out of personal friendship.
Missing from the indictment is any evidence describing the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. McDonnell and Mr. and Mrs. Williams, which would be highly relevant in interpreting the events described by prosecutors. Celeste Williams barely figures in the picture at all. Reading only the indictment and the news reports based upon it creates the impression that Maureen McDonnell and Jonnie Williams were extraordinarily close — almost creepily so. What kind of man takes his friend’s wife shopping in New York? As outside observers, we have to consider the possibility that Maureen McDonnell and Celeste Williams were close, too, that Mrs. Williams was a participant in the shopping expeditions and conceivably that she cajoled her husband into helping the McDonnells financially out of friendship. If that were the case — and I have no idea if it is or not — it would complicate the prosecution’s narrative immeasurably.
From the published record, we have only a few clues by which to piece together a portrait of the two families’ friendship.
“We had a very positive relationship for three or four years,” a somber McDonnell told The Associated Press last August.
McDonnell, who carefully couched his relationship with Williams in the past tense during the AP interview, said the enterprising venture capitalist had been his kind of guy: a self-made man from working-class stock who, like the governor, got his start in the health care services and supplies field. Both are in their late 50s. They discovered they had even both honeymooned in the same spot, Bar Harbor, Maine.
“I admire people who are entrepreneurial, who are finding ways to create opportunities in Virginia and that’s one of the reasons that when I first met him back in ’09 (or) ’10 that we established a friendship,” McDonnell said. “We both had big families. He had four kids, I had five.
“We had interesting early discussions about the field of health care and about our families,” he said.
The two men met in March 2009 when McDonnell was running for governor and Williams, a major bankroller of a previous Republican candidate, Jerry Kilgore, loaned him his airplane. When McDonnell was elected November 3, according to the indictment, “they had no personal relationship and were merely professional acquaintances at that time.”
In December 2009, the McDonnells met with Williams — the indictments do not say if Celeste Williams was included — at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City. At that time, Maureen asked for assistance in buying an Oscar de la Renta dress for the inaugural. As she made clear in an email to one of McDonnell’s aides, identified as JE, the soon-to-be first family was experiencing considerable financial stress. “Bob is screaming about the thousands I’m charging up in credit card debt. We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this Inaugural is killing us.”
Williams was willing to buy the dress but JE told Mrs. McDonnell that she could not accept such a gift. As described by the indictments, Mrs. McDonnell “became upset” with JE, but she complied, informing Williams that she would take a “rain check.” Please note: In this incident, Williams demonstrated generosity to the McDonnells without (to our knowledge) expecting anything in return.
The indictments skip over the next 10 months, apparently finding nothing indictment-worthy. The charges don’t tell us how the McDonnell-Williams friendship was evolving. It is not unreasonable to conjecture that the two couples were getting chummy by this time. Certainly, by October 2010, when Williams asked his first favor, the two families had known each other long enough to have forged a genuine friendship. Getting an authoritative answer to this question is critical for interpreting subsequent events, for it sheds light on subsequent events.
In October 2010 Williams, when traveling with McDonnell on his jet from Sacramento to Richmond, pitched Star Scientific’s Anatabloc product, a tobacco extract which he claimed possessed remarkable curative properties. Star Scientific needed the assistance of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and McDonnell told Williams that he would put him in touch with Bill Hazel, his secretary of health and human resources. Even the prosecutors do not insinuate that McDonnell expected anything from Williams in return.
Acting through subordinates in the governor’s office, McDonnell sent Hazel a Star Scientific press release on October 12 and asked him to “review the attached.” Hazel met with Williams on November 4 but was skeptical of Star Scientific’s claims. He turned down an invitation to attend a Florida meeting of the Roskamp Institute, a Florida group with ties to Star Scientific that had begun studying the compound. That was the end of that… for a while at least.
Three months later, in February 2010, Bob and Maureen McDonnell also attended a Star Scientific-sponsored seminar dinner at the Jefferson Hotel aimed at winning over physicians and health professionals to recommend Star Scientific’s CigRx, a mint-flavored lozenge that supposedly reduced peoples’ urges to smoke.
These events transpired before April 2011 when federal prosecutors charge that “the scheme” began. It is not clear why the feds included these earlier incidents, unless they were trying to demonstrate an pattern of unseemly behavior. The problem they created for themselves is that the incidents show that the McDonnells’ willingness to help Williams preceded any financial inducement on his part by months. Based on the particulars presented in the indictments, the defense will be able to argue that the first family acted either (1) out of friendship, (2) the conviction that Star Scientific warranted help like any other entrepreneurial Virginia-based business, or a (3) combination of the two.
According to the prosecutors, “the scheme” began around April 11, 2011 when Maureen approached Williams and asked him to take her shopping in New York. She wanted to buy a designer dress to wear while she and Bob attended a Union League Club, a political event. She promised to ensure that Williams would sit next to her husband at that event. Williams obliged, and the infamous New York shopping trip — nearly $20,000 in dresses and accessories for the McDonnell’s daughter’s upcoming nuptials — was the result. As promised, Williams got to sit next to the governor. There is nothing indictment-worthy in promising Williams a seat — the Union League gathering was a political event.
Pause for a minute and absorb the implications of this incident. Maureen felt comfortable enough with Williams by this point that she could make an absolutely extraordinary request, a request that few people could imagine asking of anyone: to take her on a $20,000 shopping spree. (Again, it would be interesting to know if Celeste Williams played any intermediary role as Maureen’s girl friend.) Virginians are understandably and rightfully outraged by behavior so aggressive and unseemly for a first lady. But, other than noting the temporal proximity to subsequent events, the indictment does not suggest that there was yet any you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours motivation on her part.
Only after this point do the indictments proceed to chronicle a series of meetings and events in which Maureen asked Williams for a $50,000 loan, Maureen asked for $15,000 to cover her daughter’s wedding reception, Bob engaged in email correspondence with Williams regarding the loan, the McDonnell sons racked up big expenses playing golf at Williams’ golf club, Maureen used money borrowed from Williams to buy Star Scientific stock (and sell it, and buy it back), Maureen nudged her husband to help Williams line up state research money, the governor made questionable (to be charitable) omissions in his loan applications and public disclosure forms… and all the tawdry rest of the story.
Whatever the context, the McDonnells’ behavior at the height of the giving and taking was appalling. But I’m not willing yet to declare the former First Family guilty of engaging in quid pro quo trading of favors, or even in wink-wink-nod-node trading of favors. I think there’s more to the story than has been revealed. I suspect that the relationship between the McDonnells and Williamses is far more complex and nuanced than the indictments would lead us to believe. I expect that we’ll see a lot of gray area.
I would expect the defense to argue that the McDonnells perceived both sides to be acting out of friendship, not for mercenary motives. To bolster such a case, the defense will have to bring out much more detail than we have seen so far. For the public, the trial should provide an intimate and titillating glimpse into the lives of the rich (the Williamses) and the famous (the McDonnells). Whatever the final outcome, the trial could well prove to be Virginia’s most watched trial of the decade.
