Bob and his wife Maureen McDonnell accepted more than $177,000 in gifts and loans from Star Scientific executive Jonnie R. Williams, Sr.in exchange for McDonnell’s promotion of the company’s dietary product, Anatabloc.
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But Justice Anthony Kennedy asked: “Would it be absolutely stunning to say that the government has given us no workable standard?”
Justice Stephen Breyer said the law presents “a real separation of powers problem”.
Several justices on Wednesday expressed major concerns that the laws give prosecutors too much power to criminalize the everyday acts that politician perform to help constituents. McDonnell raised Anatabloc in a meeting with state officials, set up a meeting for Williams with another Virginia official, and held a lunch at the governor’s mansion that focused on Anatabloc, the Justice Department states. In another, six minutes after emailing Williams about a loan, McDonnell emailed an aide about studies Williams wanted researchers at a public university to conduct on his product. “And, of course, they’re not”, Jeffries said.
McDonnell addressed reporters outside the courtroom after oral arguments ended Wednesday.
The question is whether actions McDonnell took on Williams’ behalf were enough to warrant prosecution under federal law. Illegal quid pro quo should be understood to take place when a person contributes funds to an elected official who acts to provide substantial benefits to the contributor or to those he or she represents, but not to others. “The governor says it’s OK for me to help you, but I need you to help me”.
In upholding McDonnell’s conviction, the appeals court “took a core feature of representative democracy – access to public officials – and turned it into a federal felony if a jury can infer a link between that access and a thing of value”.
“I think it’s extraordinary that those people agree on anything”, Robert said.
The McDonnells were indicted in January 2014, and Bob McDonnell was convicted of 11 corruption charges that fall. The defense counters that if the conviction is upheld, it would turn ordinary political acts into crimes. He and his now-estranged wife, Maureen, entered the governor’s mansion in 2010 with tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt and faltering real-estate holdings. He was sentenced in 2015 to two years in prison; she received a year-and-a-day sentence. It seemed quite clear that most of the Justices were troubled, some deeply, by a high-profile corruption case that Justice Department prosecutors won against a former Virginia governor, Robert F. McDonnell. While the government does not favor placing a cap on political contributions and gifts, Breyer said it must be vigilant in defining political access lest elected officials find themselves in a Catch-22 situation.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked about evidence that university officials said they felt pressure from the governor to help Williams. With an overly vague rule against bribery, politicians “will not know what they’re supposed to do”, he said, and “what they’re not supposed to do”.
The McDonnell case prompted the Virginia General Assembly to pass ethics reforms in its session before last.
Unlike many politicians who wound up in prison, McDonnell cuts something of a sympathetic figure: a deeply religious family man whose marriage and finances went sour during his term-limited tenure as governor.
Both, though, were allowed to remain free on bond with their appeals pending.
But McDonnell lost a probable ally in February, when Justice Antonin Scalia died.
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While a prominent Republican’s freedom is on the line, the court did not appear likely to vote along ideological lines. (Thus, a stellar lineup of criminal-law scholars, including former federal District Judge Nancy Gertner, has filed an amicus brief supporting McDonnell on the issue.) McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the latest salvo in the Court’s ongoing war on campaign-finance reform, put the Court majority on record as saying, in essence, that donors give money because they want influence, and that such influence-buying is not corrupt.
