McDonnell Rejected Federal Plea Deal That Would Have Spared Wife

Former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell may have passed on an offer from federal prosecutors that would have spared his wife from any charges and avoided a trial, The Washington Post reports. The feds offered McDonnell the chance to plead guilty on one federal charge unrelated to those eventually levied against the McDonnells: 14 counts of conspiracy and fraud for accepting money from a Virginia businessman in exchange for touting his company’s products. Some suggest the move gives weight to the theory that Maureen McDonnell accepted the cash and gifts while hiding much of it from her husband. Some legal experts thought Maureen McDonnell could try to take the blame as a way to make the a case that neither she nor her husband violated the law, as if they were “like ships passing in the night,” a former federal prosecutor theorized, “where he says, ‘I didn’t know what she was doing.’ And she says, ‘I had no idea what he was doing.’”