U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer sentenced McDonnell to two years in prison and he has remained free pending the outcome of his appeal.
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The motion from the former Republican governor of Virginia comes two days after the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider a three-judge panel ruling upholding his convictions. McDonnell said he is taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and looks forward to being vindicated.
A Richmond-based jury decided almost a year ago that McDonnell and his wife Maureen did favors for Jonnie Williams in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans. If the court agrees with the government, McDonnell would probably be required to report to federal prison within a few weeks to begin serving his two-year sentence.
McDonnell was found guilty of 11 criminal charges.
“Because the only avenue for defendant to obtain relief now is the much more demanding standard for obtaining discretionary review in the Supreme Court – a different standard than this Court considered, with limited information, when defendant first filed his appeal – he can not satisfy the standards for bail now”, prosecutors wrote. They argued that McDonnell was neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk and that his case raised “substantial” questions on which the nation’s highest court might want to opine.
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Shortly after a federal appeals court said on Tuesday that it wouldn’t revisit the case, McDonnell attorney Henry Asbill declined to say whether his client will have to report to prison. They noted that the justices receive about 9,000 petitions per term and grant review in only about 1 percent of cases. The appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments in her case in late October. In a poll of all 15 active Fourth Circuit appellate judges, eight voted against rehearing McDonnell’s case while seven claimed they were disqualified from voting.
