Never has a dietary supplement caused so much political damage. Maureen McDonnell, wife of the former Virginia governor, will follow her husband Robert McDonnell into prison after being sentenced to a year and a day for political corruption.
The McDonnells were convicted on multiple counts of corruption last September for taking $177,000 (€155,000) in gifts and loans from businessman Jonnie Williams, chief executive of Star Scientific, who sought to use the prestige of the Virginia governor's mansion to promote his vitamin supplement Anatabloc.
Robert McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison last month and is on bail pending an appeal of both his conviction and sentence.
The former governor, once a rising star in the Republican Party and for a time tipped as a potential vice presidential candidate, blamed his wife for the corrupt scheme in a trial that captivated the US political world with titillating details of a dysfunctional marriage, allegations of improper relations and shopping sprees in New York.
The gifts bestowed by Mr Williams on Mrs McDonnell included $20,000 in designer clothes and accessories, an engraved $6,500 Rolex watch she gifted to her husband, golf trips and holidays.
Mr Williams spent $15,000 on the wedding party of the McDonnells’ daughter Cailin at the governor’s mansion in 2011.
In return for all this largesse, Mrs McDonnell spoke about the benefits of Anatabloc, whose key ingredient is found in tobacco and other plants, at a seminar and the product, a key product for Mr Williams’ loss-making firm, was launched at the governor’s mansion.
"While Mrs McDonnell may have allowed the serpent into the mansion, the governor knowingly let him into his personal and business affairs," Judge James Spencer said in sentencing him.
Before her sentencing, Mrs McDonnell pleaded, through tears, for leniency, seeking to characterise her actions as mistakes, not crimes.
She asked the judge to consider her public ignominy during a six-week trial as sufficient punishment, telling him that her marriage was “broken” and “my reputation is shattered,” according to local reporters at the Richmond, Virginia courthouse.
She was the one who “let the serpent” into the mansion, she said, and “the venom from that snake has poisoned my marriage, has poisoned my family and has poisoned the commonwealth [of Virginia] that I love.”
Mrs McDonnell’s overbearing behaviour as Virginia’s first lady was a running theme during the couple’s trial. She was described as a “nutbag” by Mr McDonnell’s former chief of staff who claimed that she abused the privileged trappings of his public office to obtain gifts, shout at staff and even falsely accuse the governor’s chef of attempting to ruin her Christmas by serving “bad shrimp”.
Bob McDonnell is better known in Ireland for lobbying Taoiseach Enda Kenny in 2013 not to proceed with a plan to introduce plain packaging on cigarettes. In his letter, appealing to Mr Kenny, the Virginia governor referred to their shared roots "as sons of Co Mayo". Mr McDonnell's state is one of the biggest tobacco producers and cigarette makers in the US.
