Ex-Va. gov says he wasn't immune to wife's 'fiery anger'

RICHMOND, Va. — After reading portions of a September 2011 letter to his wife in federal court Thursday, Virginia's former governor said he thought then that his marriage might be over.

He wrote the e-mail after scheduling a rare weekend at home with his wife but instead experienced her "fiery anger" that governor's mansion staffers had testified about earlier in the ongoing corruption trial of Bob and Maureen McDonnell.

"I have made many mistakes in my life which I wish I could fix. I am sorry for all the times I have not been there for you and have done things to hurt you. I know I am a sinner and keep trying to do better. But I am completely at a loss as to how to handle the fiery anger and hate from you that has become more and more frequent," according to the e-mail displayed overhead during the trial in U.S. District Court here.

Bob McDonnell is in his second day of testimony in his own defense. He and his wife are accused of accepting more than $165,000 in gifts and loans from wealthy businessman Jonnie Williams, then chief executive of Virginia-based Star Scientific.

A year after the governor's post-Labor Day e-mail, Bob McDonnell and his wife were spending the long holiday weekend with Williams and five others at the Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Williams spent $36,000 on that vacation, including golf on the resort's course and chartering a yacht, an FBI agent testified last week.

The day Bob McDonnell sent his wife that emotional e-mail, he said his wife did not respond. While preparing for his trial, he learned that Maureen McDonnell had communicated with Williams four times that same day.

The defense has characterized the first lady as the one who solicited luxury goods and financial help from Williams. But the government indicted both Maureen and Bob McDonnell, accusing them of promoting the products of Williams' company in exchange for Williams' largess.

Bob McDonnell said he either didn't know immediately about many of Williams' gifts and loans or didn't consider them a problem because Williams hadn't asked for any favors. Virginia laws are lax on gifts to public officials but state officials must disclose anything valued at more than $50 or $100 total from a company or individual.

Among Bob McDonnell's explanations:

• A $50,000 loan. The governor said he didn't learn about this May 2011 loan, the first of three from Williams, until a month later after his wife had spent the money, so he didn't want to raise her ire. Williams had testified that he told Bob McDonnell of his plans in advance.

• A designer shopping spree. He knew nothing about Williams' April 2011 shopping trip to designer showrooms in New York, he said. His wife had told him that she got a couple of dresses and didn't say that Williams picked up the almost $20,000 tab.

• Wedding costs. Williams paid $15,000 for the wedding reception of the McDonnells' middle daughter, Cailin, who was married in June 2011 at the governor's mansion. Bob McDonnell said he considered the check an overly generous gift to his daughter, who was not a public official, so it did not need to be disclosed.

• Golf outings, equipment. Bob McDonnell first played on Kinloch Golf Club's private course in Manakin-Sabot, Va., in May 2011 with his sons and a future son-in-law, racking up an almost $2,400 bill charged to Williams' account. In August 2011, Bob McDonnell or his sons and friends played on three separate days, accumulating almost $2,800 in charges. In January 2012, the governor and his sons played again, charging more than $1,400 to Williams' account. The governor said that he didn't realize how much the recreation cost because he never had belonged to a country club and that he should have disclosed the gift.

• The Rolex. Maureen McDonnell gave her husband the $6,000 to $7,000 watch for Christmas 2011, but he didn't realize that Williams had bankrolled it, he said. It came in a Movado box, a watch that could be a 10th the price of a Rolex, without any paperwork. He wore it even though he considered it big and gaudy because he thought it was an expression of his wife's love.

• Summer vacation. In July 2011, the McDonnells and their children took a long weekend at Williams' multimillion-dollar vacation home at Smith Mountain Lake near Roanoke, Va., using a boat that Williams rented for them for $2,300. Bob McDonnell said he accepted the offer so he could have time with his family and because he had vacationed at another donated rental home the previous year.

• Use of a Ferrari. At the time Bob McDonnell drove Williams' sports car back to the Richmond area from Williams' Smith Mountain Lake home in July 2011, the governor said he had not been behind the wheel of a car in two years because his security detail drove him everywhere.

He confessed to wanting to be normal, he said. Plus his kids egged him on.

"And listen, it was a Ferrari. It was fun," Bob McDonnell said. Williams' white Ferrari retailed for $190,000, according to a 2013 Washington Post story.

Maureen McDonnell's team of defense lawyers has said that she won't take the stand herself. But Virginia's former first lady, who balked at the public life of a politician's wife, now has to listen to her husband dissect their marital woes and their finances in public.

Previous witnesses have called Maureen McDonnell angry, unstable, even potentially mentally ill. For the most part, she has stared off into space in the courtroom as they talked about her demeanor.

She rejected the idea of counseling while Bob McDonnell was governor because she thought any visits would become public, her husband said. Bob McDonnell also said he didn't think his wife was having an affair with Williams but that the two did have a strong emotional relationship.

Bob McDonnell said he liked Williams and thought he was charming when he met the CEO in 2009. Later, he had no problems with his wife's friendship because she was in a better mood after Williams was around.

Though the former governor did not say he has split from his wife of 38 years, Bob McDonnell testified that he has been staying with his parish priest since about a week before the trial started July 28 so he could immerse himself in his court case.

His marriage is on hold, he said, and probably has been since 2011.

Maureen McDonnell and Williams bonded over vitamins, her passion and an at-home business for 30 years before Bob McDonnell became governor. Bob McDonnell said he asked his wife to quit her part-time work when he became head of the state.

Williams' company sold two dietary supplements — CigRx, designed to mimic nicotine's effect on the brain and help with smoking cessation, and Anatabloc, which was touted as having anti-inflammatory properties.

In the 90 minutes that Bob McDonnell was on the stand Wednesday, he said that he had not given Star Scientific any more consideration than any other business in Virginia — no grants, no appointments to boards, no press conferences, no press releases from his office. He'd never even visited the Glen Allen, Va., offices of the company, which changed its name in June to Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RCPI) and moved its headquarters to Sarasota, Fla. Williams resigned as company chief executive in late December.

The McDonnells' private home is less than 5 miles away in Glen Allen, a Richmond suburb where they moved in 2006 after Bob McDonnell was elected attorney general.

Maureen McDonnell disliked the shift from local campaigning as a Virginia Beach, Va., member of the state House of Delegates to the glare of running for a statewide office, Bob McDonnell said Thursday.

They had lived 21 years in Virginia Beach. It was where their roots were, he said.

"I want a relationship. I want more time," the former governor said he heard from his wife. As a delegate and a member of the Army Reserves, he already was away from home more than 100 days a year and said he and Maureen started to develop separate lives as he became more and more "emotionally unavailable."

But Bob McDonnell was a rising star in conservative politics, squeaking out a win of less than 350 votes in his 2005 state attorney general's race but winning his 2009 race for governor against the same opponent by almost 18 percentage points. In 2012 while he was serving as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney considered him as a potential running mate.

Publicly, life looked good. Privately, Bob McDonnell said he avoided the problems with his wife, spending 470 days away from home in 2011 and 2012 because of his state and national work.

That is the crux of the defense teams' strategy: The McDonnells largely led separate lives and weren't communicating, so they could not have conspired to use the governor's office to enrich themselves because they were barely speaking to one another.

Before the trial began, the McDonnells had petitioned U.S. District Judge James Spencer to grant them separate trials. When the motion was denied, the McDonnells surprised trial watchers by arriving at and leaving the federal courthouse separately and sitting separately in the courtroom surrounded by their own separate teams of lawyers.

Nick Ochsner also reports for WVEC-TV, Hampton-Norfolk, Va.; Joanie Vasiliadis also reports for WUSA-TV, Washington. Contributing: Peggy Fox, WUSA-TV; Shelly Wilford, WVEC-TV; The Associated Press