Let this serve as a warning from liberals and the media to anyone who crosses, opposes, or disagrees with us.
Posted on 06/27/2016 7:43:16 AM PDT by ExNewsExSpook
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated former Gov. Bob McDonnell's conviction on corruption charges Monday morning.
The decision was unanimous, according to SCOTUSblog, which is tracking opinion releases this morning in Washington, D.C. The court overturned a decsion that rose out of the U.S. District Court in Richmond, then was affirmed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The nut of the government's case against McDonnell, and his wife Maureen, was this: In taking some $177,000 in gifts and loans from businessman Jonnie Williams, and then setting meetings Williams sought to gain legitimacy for a controversial dietary supplement, the McDonnells engaged in a quid-pro-quo that amounted to bribery.
Williams struck an immunity deal and testified that he was trying to buy the McDonnell's help.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
The latter. This was a political hit job by the Democrat establishment in Richmond. If the decision had stood then every politician who ever arranged a meeting for a donor would have been at risk. The JUST US department is now the hit squad of the Democrat party.
Where does he go to get his reputation back?
I think this paves the way for McAuliffe to get off easy.
Hi Hill , Good news!
The Supreme Court jut made it very difficult for anyone to charge you with doing favors for money given to you by the recipients of those favors, foreign or domestic.
Only the seperate FBI e-mail problem remains to be dealt with now.
This may temper their findings. -Tom
Well I certainly hope he’s learned but the more cogent fact is how did McDonnell and his wife not know taking $177 thousand from a third party as an elected official was a no no? Not the kind of people you want in office.
Yeah, that’s the bad vibe I’m getting from this as well:
“normally, the behavior of the Secretary of State in favoring parties making sizeable donations to the Clinton Foundation would be considered corruption in public office but, in the light of the recent Supreme Court ruling,we are forced to conclude... “
I have said all along that his problem was not that he was on the take. His problem was he didn’t take ENOUGH.
He can’t, and there’s the rub.
McDonnell and his greedy wife made some terrible choices, but not unlike those made by previous VA governors, including Tim Kaine. What McDonnell did was shady—but legal—under the commonwealth’s then-lax laws on gifts for public officials.
This was a political prosecution, pure and simple. The Dims saw McDonnell as a long-term threat to unseat Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, or even mount a bid for the White House. So, they cobbled together a corruption case, and got the predictable indictment and conviction from a Richmond grand jury and jury, respectively.
A sterling example of how the Dims play politics—pure bloodsport and now quarter given. When they see a GOP pol who is a threat or a potential threat, they pull out all the stops to neutralize them politically and if possible, send them to jail. Look at what happened to Tom DeLay. Ditto for Newt Gingrich. In Newt’s case, his conduct and deals laid the groundwork for getting him out of Congress, and spineless Republicans went right along with the kangaroo court.
The Dims have politicized everything—and I mean everything. That’s one reason I was surprised (and slightly encouraged) by today’s SCOTUS decision. In tossing McDonnell’s conviction, the justices noted that federal prosecutors were trying to criminalize behavior that is part-and-parcel of the political process. Not that Zero and his DOJ will be deterred by today’s decision. Still hundreds of politically-motivated prosecutors looking for more GOP scalps, and plenty of federal judges, juries and appellate judges who will support the witch hunt.
With his Virginia Beach rental properties hemorrhaging tens of thousands of dollars each year, thenVirginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell turned repeatedly to family and wealthy benefactors for large loans, a man who helped manage the properties’ finances testified Monday.
McDonnell received more than $100,000 from his father, the manager testified. He received $50,000 from a radiologist friend, the manager said. And with the properties still losing money, McDonnell picked up a final $70,000 from Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. — the man at the center of the federal corruption case against the former governor and first lady, the manager said.
When Robert F. McDonnell took office as Virginia’s 71st governor, he and his wife were mired in nearly $75,000 in credit card debt, records show. That figure soon grew to more than $90,000 — and came down because of insurance proceeds, a family trust and the generosity of a wealthy Richmond businessman, the records show. On the 13th day of the federal corruption case against McDonnell (R) and his wife, prosecutors presented the evidence about the family finances as a striking wrap-up to their case, as they began working to connect the dots for jurors.
McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, are charged with lending the prestige of the governor’s office to Williams and his dietary supplement company, Star Scientific, in exchange for loans, vacations and luxury goods. Prosecutors have said the couple were motivated to seek the executive’s generosity in part because of financial distress.
Hulser said that the couple’s debt had dipped to about $30,000 by January 2011 — largely because of money they received from a life insurance payment and a family trust. But later that year, Maureen McDonnell deposited a $50,000 check from Williams, Hulser testified. And from that bank account, she wrote checks to cover bills and other expenses, the agent said. One of the checks went to pay off a Bank of America credit card in the former governor’s name. That would indicate to jurors that Robert McDonnell shared in the benefit of the $50,000 loan to his wife and possibly knew of its existence.
In one of several examples in Hulser’s testimony, on June 1, 2011, the day Maureen McDonnell purchased Star Scientific stock, phone records show she called her broker less than an hour before she called her husband. She was in Florida at the time, appearing at an event to promote Star’s new supplement, Anatabloc.
Prosecutors on Thursday unveiled what could be a critical new piece of evidence in their case against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen: a photograph of the governor, grinning and holding up his wrist to display a watch.
Testifying during the McDonnells’ federal corruption trial, businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. said he received the photo by text message in December 2012 in response to one he sent the governor. The watch on McDonnell’s wrist appeared to be the Rolex that Williams had purchased for the governor at the first lady’s request a year earlier.
The picture could shatter any assertion that the governor was unaware that Williams — who was then the chief executive of a dietary-supplement company — had provided the expensive timepiece. McDonnell (R) has previously said the watch was a Christmas gift from his wife.
McDonnell was a crook, pure and simple. He lied about the Rolex watch and the loans. For nearly two years, the McDonnells repeatedly asked executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for loans and gifts of money, clothes, golf fees and equipment, trips, and private plane rides. The gifts and loans totaled at least $165,000.
Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has said his daughter and her husband paid for their own wedding. So a $15,000 check from a major campaign donor to pay for the food at the affair was a gift to the bride and groom and not to him and therefore did not have to be publicly disclosed under the law, the governor says.
But documents obtained by The Washington Post show that McDonnell signed the catering contract, making him financially responsible for the 2011 event. The governor made handwritten notes to the caterer in the margins. In addition, the governor paid nearly $8,000 in deposits for the catering.
When the combination of the governor’s deposit and the gift from the donor resulted in an overpayment to the caterer, the refund check of more than $3,500 went to McDonnell’s wife and not to his daughter, her husband or the donor.
The new documents suggest that the governor was more involved with the financing of the wedding than he has acknowledged.
There is nothing good about this ruling.
Let this serve as a warning from liberals and the media to anyone who crosses, opposes, or disagrees with us.
Establishment wins again. Damaged the GOP brand in Virginia just enough to put McAuliffe over the top in an extremely tight race against Cuccinelli, and now with the conviction vacated, it becomes more difficult to prosecute political corruption.
>McDonnell would possible have been a strong presidential candidate.
Not since he signed the largest tax hike in Virginia history, he wasn’t. He couldn’t have won a GOP primary had he been able to run for another term.
Witch Hunt defeated.
Compare the quid pro quo in this case with the hundreds of millions of the Clinton Crime Family escapades. What’s the FBI’s excuse for the no action.
The federal prosecutor in this case, Dana J. Boente is a 32 year veteran of the Justice Department. He originally was hired at DOJ during the Reagan Administration, in 1984.
In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts said: “There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute” .
“A more limited interpretation of the term ‘official act’ leaves ample room for prosecuting corruption, while comporting with the text of the statute and the precedent of this Court.”
For once, Chief Justice Roberts got it right. I look forward to reading his full opinion.
Meanwhile, you’d think a 32-year career prosecutor would show a little restraint. In my days covering the courts, I met a few prosecutors who literally felt they were “god” (with a large “G”) and could find crime and corruption under any rock. Some of them also had political grudges, or they were upset because they hadn’t advanced further in their career. To be fair, I don’t know Mr. Boente and can only speculate about his motivations. But a unanimous reversal by the SCOTUS is hardly a highlight of his career.
This much I know: DOJ has always been political, but never like it has under Obama. I guess a lot of career prosecutors (and other officials) sensed which way the wind was blowing and decided to bend that way and maintain their positions in the bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, you’ve got obvious violations of multiple federal statutes with Hillary’s e-mail scandal, and mark my words, Loretta Lynch will go through amazing legal contortions to avoid an indictment.
In fact, one of he more original “conspiracy theories” on the subject goes something like this: at some point, there will be rumblings about James Comey’s handling of the Orlando investigation and the FBI’s failure to identify Omar Mateen as a terrorist (never mind that it was Obama’s mandated political correctness that prevented the bureau from pursuing an investigation). There will be rumblings about Comey not doing his job, which will be picked up by the Dims on Capitol Hill.
At that point, Barry will lose confidence in the FBI director and dismiss him. There will be a huge furor and a number of agents and supervisory personnel will resign, but that won’t be a concern for Obama. Instead, the decision about recommending an indictment will be left to an acting director, someone elevated from the ranks of the career deputy directors, who may be less willing to take on the White House. The need for the appointee to fully review the evidence will create an additional delay, pushing any FBI recommendation past the election. If Hillary wins, the game’s over. If Trump wins, Obama pardons Clinton on his way out the door.
The Democrat establishment was also aided by the MSM, particularly the Washington Post and MSNBC, who reported on the case as thought it was the second coming of Watergate.
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