Tim Noah is so funny:
Last year, prosecutors offered [ex-Virginia governor] Bob [McDonnell] a deal in which he alone would plead guilty to a single felony fraud charge, according to The Washington Post. Maureen would not be charged at all. He turned it down, and both were charged on 14 counts. The legal tack they chose was for Bob to air the marriage’s dirty laundry on the witness stand – describing in lurid detail how greedy, reckless and verbally abusive she could be, even suggesting she was in love with another man – and to invite others to do so as well.
It wasn’t a strategy that seemed recognizably pro-family or Christian.
I don’t know why Jesus was always yammering away about hypocrites. It’s not like the folks who went to and graduated from Pat Robertson’s university got the message.
But, yeah, the way Creigh Deeds talks so fondly of his son, who almost killed him before he killed himself, does highlight that it wasn’t McDonnell who had the stronger family values in that 2009 election.
Jesus spoke of the hypocrites. The Qu’ran says the devil loves to quote scripture. It also says not to pay attention to whether people say they’re Christians or Jews or Muslim, but to their actions. It’s all right there, probably in many if not all of the spiritual teachings of the world.
Well, the McDonnells did their misdeeds together so that counts as family values. Of a kind. Just a very low kind.
Not accepting the plea offer seems really dumb now, but we don’t know a) the details of the offer and b) what charges McDonnell, his wife, and their attorneys thought they were facing at the time the deal was offered. Did the prosecutors put any offer on the table after the fourteen count indictment was issued? Once their best bad option was to go to trial, the defense strategy was limited. And I doubt it was done without Mrs. McDonnell’s acceptance. They were just praying for a jury more like what John Edwards got.
Difficult to believe that this was the first and only time since McDonnell entered public office that they solicited and/or took baubles.
the plea was ONE COUNT.
and, his wife WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CHARGED.
I don’t know what he had to plea to, but it was only ONE COUNT.
WAPO — the only original report source — was careful not to say that the details of plea deal had been disclosed. Only that it was “reported [source undisclosed] to have included a single felony charge for McDonnell and none for his wife.”
McDonnell may be an idiot — but doubt if the offer was a little time and jail and a little fine that his attorneys would have advised him to go forward with a lame “my wife is crazy and did it” defense with so much evidence against the two of them.
The attorneys can advise whatever they want, but McDonnell doesn’t have to follow their advice. In the end, his attorneys must do what he says, and the decision not to take a plea deal is ultimately his.