海角大神

Former Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose 2009 victory in the Virginia governor鈥檚 race came as a surprise to many given the GOP鈥檚 problems in the state just a year earlier, and who went on to become a rising star in the GOP nationally to the point where he was mentioned as a potential running mate in 2012, has been convicted on a broad series of corruption charges along with his wife, Maureen, by a federal court jury in Richmond:

In addition to the fact that McDonnell is now the first governor in Virginia history to be convicted of corruption charges for acts that occurred while he was in office, this trial will likely also be remembered for the rather unique defense that Mr. McDonnell and his wife both decided to put on before the jury. As I recounted when the trial opened, the defense essentially involved dragging all of the dirty laundry between Bob and Maureen McDonnell before the jury and arguing that, notwithstanding the public face that they put on during the governor鈥檚 time in office, the two of them were so estranged during the time these alleged acts were committed that they could not have possibly conspired together.

For his part, McDonnell alleged that his wife was infatuated with Johnnie Williams, the Virginia businessman who was at the center of the case and who gave both McDonnells tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and cash. For his part, Mr. Williams, who was a cooperating witness with the US attorney and is unlikely to ever be charged in this matter, testified that as far as he was concerned his gifts to the McDonnells, which included everything from a shopping spree in New York to covering the majority of the cost of the McDonnell鈥檚 daughter鈥檚 wedding, was solely for the purpose of advancing the interests of his company.

When it came time for the defense to put on its case, it was more like a soap opera that a criminal trial, with the former governor spending several days on the stand detailing the intimate details of his marriage, which apparently wasn鈥檛 in very good shape even when he was running for governor in 2009, and throwing his wife under the bus. Mrs. McDonnell didn鈥檛 testify, but the basic message of her defense appeared to be that she was too wrapped up in her collapsing marriage to have any ability to conspire with her estranged husband. In the end, obviously, the jury didn鈥檛 think much of that defense.

The McDonnells will be sentenced on Jan. 6, and potentially face decades in prison, although it鈥檚 likely that they will actually be sentenced to something less than that once the federal sentencing guidelines are applied. Even after that point, though, it鈥檚 likely that these verdicts will be appealed. Among the many issues that are likely to be the subject of such an appeal are the jury instructions that were given to the jury before deliberations began on Tuesday. By some accounts, the judge drafted instructions that were so broad in their definition of what kind of act could constitute 鈥渉onest services wire fraud鈥� that it made virtually anything a politician would do on behalf of a donor or constituent into a potential criminal act.

Additionally, there鈥檚 the rather interesting question of how it is that McDonnell could be found guilty of doing things that were not at all guilty under Virginia law, an important question given the fact that the indictment that was originally filed in this case essentially made the case out that the McDonnells violated federal law by conspiring to defraud Virginia voters. If what he was doing was legal under Virginia law, then one wonders how it could be the basis for a federal lawsuit.

Those are legal issues that will have to be resolved at another time, though. Even if the verdicts are overturned on appeal and a new trial is ordered, which is not an easy thing to accomplish in federal court, the fact of McDonnell鈥檚 conviction and his fall from grace will stand. For someone who seemed like he could have been one of the rising stars of the GOP just a few years ago, it was quite a fall indeed.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/