WASHINGTON – The courtroom at the McDonnell trial was packed to the brim for only a few days of the nearly six-week trial, but the case brought a varied cast of characters on top of several stand-out witnesses.
While Bob and Maureen McDonnell’s children were not allowed in the courtroom because they were on the witness list, all five of them came for closing arguments. Cailin McDonnell waited anxiously in the courtroom hallway on several of the final days before presentation of the evidence was completed.
Three of the kids, Cailin, Jeanine and Bobby McDonnell, were called to testify in the case.
Cailin McDonnell testified about the $15,000 check Jonnie Williams gave to her mother to give to the caterers for Cailin’s wedding reception.
It was the discovery of that check, as part of an investigation into the then- Executive Mansion chef’s theft of food from the mansion, that led investigators to look at the McDonnells’ relationship with Jonnie Williams, who was already being investigated for securities fraud.
Williams received full immunity in exchange for his truthful testimony in the trial.
Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky, the oldest child who once served in Iraq, testified about her parents’ troubled marriage and the wedding gifts of a $10,000 check plus honeymoon plane tickets she got from Jonnie Williams. She later returned those gifts when the investigation was reported in the media, or in her words, “once we realized Jonnie was a criminal.”
When she returned for closing arguments with her husband, she wrapped herself from neck to toe in a red blanket to ward off the cold from the strong air conditioning in the seventh-floor courtroom.
She is also pregnant with the McDonnells’ first grandchild, and said that she is due in January, the same month the former governor and first lady are scheduled to be sentenced.
Sean McDonnell flew in for closing arguments only. And their other daughter Rachel attended for most of the final two weeks.
In addition to the immediate McDonnell family, Bob McDonnell’s sisters were often in the courtroom along with other extended family, the family’s priest, and former staffers like McDonnell’s Secretary of the Commonwealth Janet Kelly.
Friends of the family came from areas like Fairfax County and Virginia Beach to be with them during the trial, and even during the verdict.
“It’s hit a lot of us hard because we think a lot of Bob,” one friend said of the charges at the start of the trial’s second week.
Among those with little connection to the family was one man who said he worried of a political agenda in the case. Another man from Lynchburg stopped by to watch for a few hours on his way to Busch Gardens, and a third was hoping to see the former Gov. Doug Wilder who never took the stand.
The largest consistent presence in the gallery was the media. The media closely watched the reaction of the McDonnells, the jury, the judge, and the 20 or so lawyers, agents and paralegals sitting in the well of the court.
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