Updates: Day 19 of the McDonnell corruption trial

Robert F. McDonnell said he was a little embarrassed in early 2012 when Maureen McDonnell pitched Anatabloc to the wife of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, suggesting that Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s unproven dietary supplement might help Ann Romney combat multiple sclerosis.

The governor had traveled to South Carolina on the eve of the Republican primary to endorse the former Massachusetts governor for president. Maureen McDonnell met him in the state, as did Jonnie Williams.

Jurors have heard before what happened when Maureen McDonnell made her pitch aboard the campaign bus. Two McDonnell aides overheard, and one of them leapt into the conversation to steer it to another topic. That aide, Phil Cox, called the exchange a “train wreck” – one that would reflect poorly on Bob McDonnell at a time when he was a contender to be Romney’s running mate.

Bob McDonnell described his own reaction in softer terms, but he said the pitch was “inappropriate.”

“I overheard a little bit,” he said. “I knew my wife was trying to be helpful, but it felt inappropriate in that setting for Maureen to be having that discussion.”

Asked if his wife’s actions had embarrassed him, McDonnell said: “A little bit, yes.”

Bob McDonnell said he had not been aware of any effort by Maureen McDonnell to get Mitt Romney to meet with Williams during that time. And he said there would have been no way to shoehorn a meeting into Romney’s tightly scripted schedule, with two days left before the primary.

“That just was not going to happen,” Bob McDonnell.

Bob McDonnell said he shot down Maureen McDonnell when she asked if she could take a paid position on Star Scientific’s board. She initially said Williams wanted the governor himself to serve, and when Bob McDonnell said that would be inappropriate, she asked if she could serve.

“I thought that was a very bad idea,” Bob McDonnell said, noting the potential for conflicts of interest. “I think she understood that. I think that would affect me directly and I said, ‘You can’t do that.’”

After a bit more testimony from the governor, court adjourned with the defense still on direct examination of the former governor. The trial resumes Friday at 9:45 a.m.

Robert F. McDonnell spent the last few minutes of Thursday’s proceedings describing his role in a real estate company he co-owned with his sister to manage two rental properties in Virginia Beach. The company is important to the case because prosecutors have alleged that the properties’ financial distress in part led the McDonnells to seek the generosity of Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

McDonnell said his sister, Maureen C. McDonnell, was the stronger financial partner in the company, though starting in 2012, as she split up with her husband, he began to take more of a role in managing the books.

Early that year, when his wife and then-brother-in-law, Michael Uncapher, were working to provide financial help to the real estate partnership, McDonnell said he was out of the loop.

Jurors were shown a Jan. 25, 2012, e-mail from Uncapher to Bob McDonnell that said he had talked to the first lady and “she had me talk to the guy who is helping us.” McDonnell forwarded the message to his wife and asked a question in which he misspells Williams’s first name: “Who are we talking about …. Johnnie?”

McDonnell said he did not know that his wife and Uncapher had been talking about a loan for the real estate partnership. His lawyer, Henry Asbill, did not press him on whether the e-mail made that clear to him or if he remained in the dark..

Robert F. McDonnell asserted firmly Thursday that he had no idea the Rolex watch his wife gave him for Christmas in 2011 actually was purchased by Jonnie R. Williams Sr. — at least not until the federal investigation was underway.

McDonnell said he learned the true source of the $6,500 luxury timepiece in March 2013 — more than a year after he got it. He denied sending Williams a picture text of himself wearing the Rolex in 2012 — a picture Williams has previously said was a confirmation to him that the governor knew who actually purchased the watch.

The testimony puts McDonnell at odds with Williams on a gift that jurors will likely remember. And jurors will likely be forced to believe one man’s testimony over the other’s, because while they have seen the picture from 2012, there is no corresponding record of a text with it.

McDonnell’s testimony is also the first time he has explained publicly, from start to finish, how he got the watch, what he knew about its purchase, and when he knew it.

McDonnell said his wife gave it to him as a Christmas present in 2011 — wrapped in a non-Rolex box, with no accompanying paperwork. “The packing that I got said, ‘From Santa,'” McDonnell said, “but that’s something my wife typically does.”

McDonnell testified that his wife also frequently bought him watches — the one he wears now, he says, is a 15-year-old Seiko, from her — so the gift itself was not entirely unusual. But he said he knew it was “expensive,” and figured a job Maureen McDonnell had recently obtained with philanthropic arm of one of the state’s major coal companies made it possible for her to afford the purchase.

“I didn’t interrogate her,” he said. “I didn’t question her about where it came from or any of that.”

McDonnell said the watch appeared to be new, but because of its packaging and lack of paperwork, he suspected that “maybe it’s not real.” He said he wore it for a couple weeks and said that two staffers soon advised him not to. Some time after that, he said, he began wearing it only on special occasions, mostly around family.

“Did you like the watch?” defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked.

“Not really,” McDonnell responded. “It was big. It was gaudy. It wasn’t my kind of watch.”

But McDonnell had to acknowledge he was photographed in December 2012 wearing the timepiece, and that photo ended up in Williams’s hands.

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell is seen wearing the Rolex watch given to him by businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. The watch is engraved with the words “Robert F. McDonnell, 71st Governor of Virginia.” (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

Jurors have already seen the photo, and heard Williams testify he got it from the governor himself — despite a lack of phone records corroborating his account. McDonnell, though, said the photo appeared to have been shot in the back of a state police SUV. And based on the angle and where his wife usually sits in the vehicle, he said he assumed Maureen McDonnell was the one to take it.

“My best recollection is that would have been taken by my wife,” McDonnell said.

The photo shows McDonnell grinning and holding his hand aloft — Williams said he interpreted that as the governor bragging about the expensive gift. But McDonnell said he has no specific memory of its taking — “I’ve had my picture taken so many times,” he said — and he vehemently denied having sent it to Williams in a text.

“Do you know how this picture got to Jonnie Williams?” Asbill asked.

“I know how it didn’t get there … It didn’t get there from me,” he said.

Robert F. McDonnell says he has reviewed phone records from 2011 and discovered that he and businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. spoke by phone just once that year and exchanged only a handful of text messages. He said he believed their only phone call was a message the governor left in May 2011 that lasted under 2 minutes and consisted of him thanking Williams for paying for a golf game.

His defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked him: Was he was aware at the time of how often his wife was speaking to Williams?

“I had no idea,” he said. He said when he and his legal team started gathering records as part of the investigation, he learned his wife had 950 texts and phone calls with Williams that year.

“I was actually hurt,” he said. “And I was very surprised. Minutes that were more than she talked to me.”

In November 2011, according to Robert F. McDonnell, his wife informed him that she had not transferred shares of Star Scientific stock she had purchased earlier into her children’s names, as he had thought was her plan.

She told him she had been trying. But she wanted to put the stock in her children’s names but retain control of the shares, so they could be presented to the children at their weddings.

McDonnell said he immediately looked up the price of Star stock and discovered it had plummeted since her purchase in June. The value of her holding had dropped from $30,000 to around $15,000. Recalling that his wife viewed this money as the replacement of her father’s inheritance check — which her husband had required her to spend paying down credit card bills, he said he offered this blunt assessment: “You’ve lost half your dad’s inheritance.”

He told her she should sell the shares, that Star was not a “blue chip” stock and was not the company she wanted to give as a wedding presents to their children.

But, he insisted, that advice had nothing to do with the fact that the end of the year was looming and that, under Virginia law, if she held the stock at year’s end, it would need to be reported. He noted he had reported significant campaign contributions from Williams. “There was not reason not to report it,” he said of the stock.

In October 2011, Maureen McDonnell attended three Star Scientific events for investors and doctors, speaking on behalf of the company and allowing her name to be used on their invitations, using the title first lady of Virginia.

But Robert F. McDonnell testified he knew little about those events. The former governor said he learned of the first, an event at a Richmond Westin, only after the investigation began. He said he knew his wife was going to the second, an event in Flint Michigan. But he understood the event to be a small informal gathering, where his wife would learn more about research into Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s product.

Williams testified that he called McDonnell the night before that event took place, to alert the governor that he was taking his wife to it. McDonnell just testified that call never happened.

As for a third event in California, he said he knew only that his wife and several other woman had accepted an offer from Williams to fly on his private plane to an annual convention for Nu-Skin, a different supplement company, in Utah. He said he didn’t know they also flew to a Star event in California.

Earlier in the trial, jurors saw videotape of Maureen McDonnell speaking at those events, praising the company and even calling Jonnie Williams a longtime friend.

“I did not think that,” he said. “That’s not accurate. We had known each other for a short amount of time.”

As for the trio of promotional events overall, he said: “Had I known that there would be investors and press and she was going to speak and be introduced in her official — or rather her unofficial — position as first lady, I would have seen it different.”

(That last verbal correction was an acknowledgement that McDonnell is intimately familiar with his team’s legal strategy. They are arguing that Maureen McDonnell, as a first lady, was a private citizen and could not trade her office for bribes. He corrected himself before suggesting that he believed being first lady was some kind of “official” position.)

Robert F. McDonnell testified that he showed up a little late to a September 2011 charity auction in Richmond that his wife was co-chairing at the Hilton Hotel and Spa, and when he arrived, Jonnie R. Williams Sr. was already sitting at a table with the first lady. He said he sat down, and soon got another surprise.

He was being auctioned off.

At some point, McDonnell testified, the emcee at the so-called Cure By Design event told the crowd he was offering a weekend vacation at his own condo in New York — an item that wasn’t originally up for sale. What happened next, McDonnell said, is unclear, but the emcee then said the governor and first lady would be on the trip, and whoever won it would be flying up to New York in Williams’s private plane.

McDonnell said he knew, then, that he was “not going and staying in some stranger’s apartment in New York for a weekend,” but he did not want to cause a scene. He said decided to “wait it out and see what happened,” figuring he could work something out with the winning bidder later.

That turned about to be Williams, for $15,000.

McDonnell said he never went on the trip with Williams — and he wasn’t sure if Williams used the condo himself. But he said he and his wife did join Williams and a male model friend for dinner at the hotel that night.

“We were obviously appreciative that he would make a donation to a charity my wife was working on,” McDonnell said.

And Williams paid the dinner bill, too, McDonnell said.

Jonnie R. Williams Sr. is said to have arranged and paid for outings for the McDonnells at Kinloch Golf Club in Goochland County, according to testimony. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

Declaring that he’s “never belonged to a country club in my life,” Robert F.  McDonnell said he did not realize just how much money golf outings for the governor and his sons were costing Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

Jurors have previously heard about several visits McDonnell and his sons made to the private Kinloch Golf Club on Williams’s tab. In addition to fees for caddies and the golf itself, there were charges for food and gear at the pro shop. At least one trip alone cost more than $1,000.

Bob McDonnell was fuzzy about whether he’d personally gone into the pro shop to buy items.

“I know my sons might have gone in,” he said. “Somehow we did end up with some shirts. I know we had a couple of things to eat,” both before and after one round of golf.

Bob McDonnell said at the kinds of places he’d normally golf, “I’m used to paying $50 or $75.”

“I’ve never belonged to a country club in my life,” he said. “I didn’t ask the questions. I didn’t have any idea it was going to be in the thousands of dollars.”

He added: “I didn’t know, but I should have.”

The golf outings did not appear on McDonnell’s public disclosure of gifts.

The governor said that was because “the donor is supposed to submit the cost” of a donation to the governor’s office, so he can account for it on his annual statement. He said Williams had not submitted the information to his office.

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell talks with reporters outside the federal courthouse in Richmond on Wednesday. Also leaving with McDonnell is, from left, his sister, Eileen, his daughter Cailin Young, the Rev. Wayne Ball, and on the right of McDonnell, the Rev. Timothy Scully from Notre Dame. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

Friar Wayne Ball, pastor of the Catholic church where Robert F. McDonnell is staying during his trial, has written a blog post exploring an issue much-discussed over the past few days — the former Virginia governor’s public testimony about intimate marital problems.

“[Y]esterday as I watched Bob take the oath, an oath I had heard a thousand times, I heard three words as I had never heard them before,” Ball wrote on his blog. Those words: “the whole truth,” something most Catholics only divulge during a confidential confession. It would be impossible for either spouse in a long-married couple to testify to “the whole truth” without discussing their marriage, Ball wrote.

He appeared to defend McDonnell against columnists who have criticized him for speaking in such personal and unflattering terms about his wife: “The media keeps talking about ‘throwing his wife under the bus.’ Yesterday, I saw in stark reality how our legal system only gives us a binary choice. You can refuse to testify, which is your right. Or you can tell the whole truth. There is no third option.”

Saying few people would want to disclose such truth, he closed with a quote from the Bible: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”

Ball wrote that he has avoided references to the trial on his blog up until now, but that he felt compelled to speak out on a problem he had never considered before. He has attended the trial regularly but was unable to be in court on Thursday, he wrote.

For a profile of Maureen McDonnell last year, Ball told The Washington Post that you could see the couple’s humility in the way they worshiped at tiny St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. “They just come up the side aisle, come and take their seats in the pew, not making an entrance,” Ball said. “If she wanted to make a show, we’ve got the cathedral.”

McDonnell has been staying in the St. Patrick’s rectory during the trial, he revealed during his testimony, because it would be hard to stay “fresh” for court if he was going home to his wife each night and rehashing the day’s events. Their marriage is “basically on hold,” he said.

Another priest testified Wednesday that McDonnell is “a role model for all of us” who “embodies virtue.” 

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell is seen driving the Ferrari of businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

Robert F. McDonnell has just explained why he drove Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s Ferrari this way: “At some point, I’m entitled to be normal.”

The former governor was telling the jury how as governor he did not get to drive, but he took the wheel when Williams’s sports car when vacationing at the Star chief’s Smith Mountain Lake home in July 2011.

Williams testified earlier in the trial that he’d had the car transported to the home for the McDonnells’ use. And jurors were earlier shown an invoice for a transportation company hired to pick up the Star employee who had dropped the vehicle off at the house.

But McDonnell said he was under the impression that he was doing Williams a favor by driving the car back to Richmond. The former governor was fuzzy about just when he realized the car was at the house. He said it might have been in the garage, possibly under a cover.

But at some point, he knew he was in the presence of a very expensive car.

“We saw it was a very significant high-performance car,” he said.

McDonnell initially expressed indifference about the Ferrari. They had everything they needed for the family get-away right there at Williams’s lakeside home, which had a private dock and boat rented for the McDonnells’ use.

“There was no need to go anywhere,” he said. “It was a water vacation.”

He said he drove it once to brunch a mile away. As for the three-hour spin back to Richmond, McDonnell said he was planning to jump in the back of his state SUV and let someone else drive it.

So why did he drive it, his attorney asked.

“I hadn’t driven in almost two years,” he said. “At some point, I’m entitled to be normal.”

He also said his children talked him into it. “My kids kind of egged me on.”

Only after all that did he concede that, well, yeah, Ferraris are fun.

“Listen, it was a Ferrari,” McDonnell said, noting that his family car is a Toyota with 180,000 miles on it. “It was fun. I enjoyed it. … I was on vacation.”

Cailin McDonnell testified that this is a photo of Jonnie Williams Sr.’s vacation home at Smith Mountain Lake, which was used by the McDonnells. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

Former governor Robert F. McDonnell said he decided to accept a lake house vacation from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in the summer of 2011 at his wife’s suggestion. The previous summer, they had stayed at a home provided to them by a different company, Delta Star.

When Williams offered his house, she said they should go there instead for a summer. Meanwhile, Delta Star still paid some expenses for the trip, including some food and golf.

Lawyer Henry Asbill asked McDonnell: Why, generally, did he believe people give gifts to the governor?

Prosecutors objected, so Judge James R. Spencer jumped in, indicating that the governor could answer because he, in fact, already provided an answer to that question on Wednesday.

“I think you answered, sir, that everyone who gives you something wants something, right?” Spencer said, echoing McDonnell’s words about campaign donors.

McDonnell expanded, indicating that some people give because they like the elected official. Some people give to get time or access to the governor.

McDonnell said that as governor, he accepted gifts like tickets and vacations so he could spend time with his family. “I didn’t see a ticket or an event. I saw time with family.”

Indeed, at Smith Mountain Lake, he said he spent time with his children and wife, boating and golfing.

Jurors have heard testimony that Jonnie R. Williams Sr. flew some of the McDonnell children to a retreat hosted by the governor’s political action committee at the Homestead Resort in western Virginia.

Did the governor himself know that?

He said on the witness stand Thursday that he cannot quite remember.

“I’m not completely certain,” Robert F. McDonnell said, adding that those arrangements were likely made by his scheduler, and his wife was possibly involved. “I’m just not sure.”​

McDonnell also provided an explanation for Williams’s attendance at the retreat: He said the event was meant for major political donors, and Williams’s lending his private plane to the campaign put him in that category.

A U-Va. golf bag that was given to Bobby McDonnell by Jonnie R. Williams Sr. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

Robert F. McDonnell has provided some new information about golf equipment given by Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in the summer of 2011 to his sons, as well as a Notre Dame golf bag given to the governor himself. He did not disclose the bag, although he says now he figured it likely cost more than $50, which triggered the reporting requirement.

In June 2011, a set of new golf clubs in a new University of Virginia golf bag “just showed” up at the governor’s mansion — a gift from Williams to McDonnell’s son Bobby. McDonnell said no one had asked for the clubs, but Williams gave them anyway. “It seemed different than the wedding present. It came out of the blue. There was no event,” McDonnell said. “My feeling was that the gift was a little much.”

Like his son earlier in the trial, McDonnell testified that he gave that advice to his son. But, he said, his son was 20 or 21 years old. “I knew that the gift was perfectly lawful under Virginia law.” He said Williams hadn’t asked him for anything. So McDonnell told his son “what my opinion was” but did not object when he decided to keep the clubs.

Later that summer, a set of golf clubs that appeared to be used showed up as a gift for Sean. Again, McDonnell said he expressed his reservations but didn’t tell Sean to return.

But in July of that year, McDonnell said a Notre Dame golf bag arrived intended for him. He explained that the “system was supposed to be that gifts were logged” for later reporting purposes. “Gifts of that type would be captured,”​ he said.

McDonnell acknowledged that he assumed the golf bag cost more than $50 — perhaps as much as several hundred dollars. He didn’t explicitly explain why he did not disclose the gift.

Robert F. McDonnell testified Thursday that he intended to report the $50,000 loan Jonnie R. Williams Sr. made to his wife in 2011 — and the stock she bought with it — basically from the moment he found out about the money.

Talking about the loan with Maureen McDonnell around the time he learned about it, McDonnell said he told his wife, “I was going to have to report the loan, and I’d have to report this stock at the end of the year, but I wasn’t worried about it.”

Talking specifically of the stock later, he said that was something he would address “when we got closer to disclosure time.”

The statements are interesting because McDonnell’s disclosure of both the loan and the stock — and his requirement to do so — are nebulous.

On the form for 2011 disclosures, the governor marked that a member of his immediate family held a liability to an individual creditor of at least $50,000. That could refer to the loan. But McDonnell described the creditor as being employed in “medical services” and never named Williams as the lender.

McDonnell did not disclose the stock, but jurors have now heard testimony that his wife sold it, then repurchased it, at year’s end, avoiding the requirement to do so.

Prosecutors have posited both the way McDonnell disclosed the loan and his wife’s stock transactions as evidence that they were trying to hide their relationship with Williams.

Robert F. McDonnell has just acknowledged he learned, in June 2011, that Jonnie R. Williams Sr. loaned his wife $50,000 weeks earlier.

So, defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked, “Why didn’t you ever just tell her to give it back?”

The question is probably one that jurors will wonder about and prosecutors would have asked if Asbill did not. McDonnell responded that he “thought about that” — mainly because he did not want his wife incurring another debt “we didn’t need” — but he wanted to avoid a fight about it.

“I learned, though, I just needed to pick the battles with my wife on certain things very carefully,” McDonnell said.

McDonnell said he was thinking, in particular, about his decision the year before to make his wife put about $25,000 from her late father’s estate toward their family’s credit card bills against her wishes. That led to an emotional fight, and McDonnell said he quickly regretted telling Maureen McDonnell how to spend her own money.

“I just was not going to take on that fight again with my wife,” he said. “I had made a decision that she was very, very emotionally unhappy about before, and I was just not going to do it again.”

And McDonnell said when he analyzed the loan from a business and government perspective, it made some sense.

First, McDonnell said he did not see any “conflict” with Williams and his company, Star Scientific, because they had not yet asked him for anything.

“I haven’t done anything for Jonnie Williams. He hasn’t asked me for anything,” McDonnell said, explaining his reasoning for not returning the loan. “Star Scientific hasn’t asked me for anything.”

He said his wife, too, now had the “capacity” to pay the loan back — having recently acquired a position with the philanthropic arm of one of the state’s major coal companies that paid her a $36,000 salary.

​McDonnell said a portion of the loan was devoted to buying stock — noting that was how his wife wanted to spend the money from her father’s estate — and another portion was to paying down credit card debts that Maureen McDonnell had incurred. That, in a way, helped the McDonnells’ financial situation. McDonnell said his wife told him the loan had a mere 2 percent interest rate, and it was to be paid back essentially all at once in 2015.

McDonnell said he eventually talked to Williams personally to confirm the terms of the loan — though that was after the check was written. He said he “certainly expected a loan to have some documents attending that” — though Maureen did not have any for him.

“I never talked to Mr. Williams before that loan was delivered to my wife,” he said.

Notes written during a meeting between Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell regarding a $50,000 loan. (Trial evidence)

Robert F. McDonnell testified that he only found out after the fact that his wife had borrowed $50,000 from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and used $30,000 to buy Star Scientific stock.

The former governor said that on the day after their daughter Cailin’s wedding, Maureen McDonnell told him that when Williams came to the mansion on May 23, 2011, to give her a $15,000 check for the wedding catering, he also gave her a $50,000 loan.

“I was just astounded,” he said. “We didn’t need any money.”

That account flatly contradicts what Williams said on the stand: That he talked with the governor before extending the loan. The executive had testified that he felt the need to consult with the Virginia governor since he was the bread-winner.

McDonnell’s asserting that the couple did not need any money also goes against the narrative advanced by the prosecution, that the McDonnells were in financial distress.

Bob McDonnell acknowledged that the couple had substantial credit card debt, but he’d whittled it down from $90,000 to $30,000.
“The $30,000 in credit card debt, we had it perfectly under control,” he said.

Bob McDonnell said his wife used $20,000 of the loan to pay down credit card debt. The rest she poured into Star stock. She said she’d always wanted to give her children stock as a wedding gift, he said.

The shares were not transferred to the newlyweds or other McDonnell children at that time, and prosecutors say the shares were moved in an effort to dodge reporting requirements on Bob McDonnell’s financial disclosure form.

Bob McDonnell said his wife’s actions puzzled and angered him.

“There was no sense of urgency to pay down the credit card bills. ‘I just don’t understand why you did this,’ ” he recalled telling her. “I was extremely upset. ‘Maureen, I manage the finances.’”

McDonnell said his wife insisted that she could spend Williams’s money as she pleased.

“She looked at the money as a substitute for the money I had taken from her the year before,” he said, referring to the check from her father’s estate that McDonnell had insisted the couple put toward paying down credit card debt.

Now Robert F. McDonnell is confronting some of the specific pieces of circumstantial evidence shown by prosecutors that might suggest he knew about his wife’s stock purchase earlier than he indicated he learned of it.

His attorney Henry Asbill showed him a chart put together by an FBI agent that showed he spoke with his wife by phone for four minutes on June 1, 2011, right after she spoke with her stockbroker. “I really don’t remember that call,” McDonnell said. But, he added, “She didn’t tell me about the stock until June 5.”

Asbill also showed McDonnell a Post-It note that prosecutors had introduced with a series of numbers regarding the family’s financial situation, including net annual salary and net worth. The stockbroker testified that he told Maureen McDonnell that she needed to gather some details about family finances from her husband and, as a result, she had given him this Post-It note. That might suggest that she had, in fact, consulted with her husband and used him to help her put together the information.

But McDonnell testified that he had never seen the Post-It before it was displayed in court and was not entirely sure exactly what the numbers on it, in places, were intended to convey.

“This is my wife’s handwriting, but I can’t tell what she means,” he said.

Robert F. McDonnell said daughter Cailin’s wedding day was a “spectacular day.”

“It was tearful for me, walking my little girl down the aisle,” he said, made more special because he very much liked his new son-in-law Chris Young. “As a dad, this was a man who was going to take care of her the way I had taken care of her when she was a little girl.”

Beyond the $8,000 he put towards catering, McDonnell said he also paid a few other wedding expenses, including the photographer. He said he recalled learning at that time that a Virginia Beach doctor lent his daughter a limo and Charlottesville socialite Patricia Kluge had given wine. Other items, he said, he did not know had been donated.

Cailin McDonnell earlier testified that the wedding rings were donated by a jeweler then running for the House of Delegates, along with picture frames given as favors to guests. She paid $43 for her wedding dress.

“Did you solicit anything or get people to give gifts?” his lawyer Henry Asbill asked.

“Not to my recollection,” he said.

Shortly before the wedding, McDonnell testified that his communications director, Tucker Martin, came to him with a question that had been posed by members of the media given that the wedding would be held at the governor’s mansion.

“Is the state paying for any of the expenses or is the family paying for it?” he said was the questions. “I told him the family was paying for it. That was the question I got.”

Asbill continued: “You viewed it as, taxpayer vs. non-taxpayer?”

“Yes, that was the question I got,” McDonnell repeated.

Martin has testified that he released public statements at the time indicating that the family was paying because that’s what he was told to say by the governor.

Cailin McDonnell, daughter of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, with her fiance, Christopher Young hold a reception at the Executive Mansion days before their wedding. (Photo by Mike Topham, via the Governor’s Office)

More than a year after Maureen McDonnell made a splash at a June 2011 Anatabloc investors’ conference — professing her faith in the supplement and offering to launch the product from the governor’s mansion — Robert F.  McDonnell first got wind of what she’d done, the governor testified.

Her appearance and vows of support quickly created a buzz on at least one investor Web site, but McDonnell said he was not aware at the time that she’d pledged her support before a large audience.

McDonnell said he knew his wife was traveling to Florida to learn more about Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s dietary supplement. But he said he thought she was simply going to observe some clinical trials and chat with a few scientists.

“I didn’t send her as my surrogate or anything,” Bob McDonnell said. “She wasn’t going as first lady. She was going because of her longstanding interest in nutraceuticals.”

Only after the investigation got underway in March 2013 did McDonnell learn that the first lady had pledged her support before a large gathering of investors, he said.

“I found out she had spoken probably a month after the investigation started in March of last year,” he said. “I thought it was a handful of people.”

On May 28, 2011, Robert F. McDonnell sent Jonnie R. Williams Sr. a text, thanking the dietary supplement executive for “all your help with my family.” He referenced a wedding gift to his daughter Cailin and golf outings for his sons, specifically.

McDonnell said at the time, he had no idea that Williams had written a $50,000 check as loan to his wife, or even talked about such a large financial contribution.

The testimony is important because it stands in conflict with what Williams said. The businessman said though he agreed to provide the money to Maureen McDonnell, who was complaining of financial woes, he said he would need to talk to her husband, first.

“I needed to make sure her husband knew about it,” Williams testified previously. “He’s the breadwinner in the house, and I’m not writing his wife checks without him knowing about it.”

Williams said previously the two men, at some point, talked, and the governor thanked him.

Although the timing is murky, McDonnell denied the businessman told him about the check before giving it to Maureen.

“Did you see him or talk to him that day before the check was given to Maureen?” defense attorney Henry “Hank”‘ Asbill asked.

“No, that’s absolutely false,” McDonnell testified. ​

Former Gov. Bob McDonnell said he knew around the time of his daughter’s June 2011 wedding that there had likely been a refund check issued by the event’s caterer but he assumed that money had gone to his daughter. He told jurors that he only learned nearly two years later that it had in fact been pocketed by his wife.

McDonnell testified that he knew he had paid about $8,000 in deposits toward the catering, which he said cost about $15,000. Then Jonnie R. Williams Sr. paid $15,000 for the event. All told, $23,000 had been paid to the catering business run by Todd Schneider, who was also the executive chef at the gubernatorial mansion. That would mean Schneider returned about $7,000 after the event.

In this July 14, 2010 photo, executive chef Todd Schneider poses in the dining room of the Executive Mansion in Richmond. (AP Photo/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Joe Mahoney)

“I expected that money would go to Cailin,” he said, referring to his daughter. He said he felt like his deposits were a gift to Cailin and Williams’s money was a gift to Cailin and thus instructed that any refund should likewise go to his daughter.

He said that’s exactly what he thought had happened, until Feb. 14, 2013. That was the night before Maureen McDonnell was scheduled to sit down for an interview with Virginia State Police about allegations that Schneider had been stealing food from the mansion. McDonnell said he was aware that one of the things Schneider had told police was that he had been underpaid for the wedding and therefore was repaying himself in food.

So McDonnell said he got together all the documents from the wedding. “I asked her that night, ‘did she give the refund back to Cailin?'” He said his wife confessed that night that she had not but instead had kept the money for herself.

McDonnell said he learned his wife had deposited the check in her own bank account. He testified that he did not have access to that account.

“I said, Maureen, I told you and you told me that you had done this. Why haven’t you done this?'” he said. “The wedding gift was intended not for her and not for me, but for our daughter.”

“I said, ‘you need to give her the money. It’s not your money. It’s not my money. It’s Cailin’s money,'” he said. “I thought that was a matter of fundamental integrity.”

McDonnell said his wife no longer had easy access to records showing the exact amount of the refund, but he estimated it be about $7,300. At his instruction, a few days later, Maureen McDonnell delivered a $7,300 check to Cailin.

Back from lunch Thursday, defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill pressed Robert F. McDonnell on a question that is likely on jurors’ minds.

Why let your daughter accept $15,000 from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for the catering at your wedding, but not let your wife take a designer dress from Williams for the inaugural festivities?

McDonnell said he saw the two gifts differently.

The dress offer came in 2009, and McDonnell said at that time, he was hardly familiar with Williams. ​”The day that Mr. Williams made that offer,” McDonnell testified, “this was really the first time I had met him.” McDonnell said he was concerned, too, that his wife sporting an Oscar de la Renta gown at what was not supposed to be “an overly fancy event” might contradict his message of helping Virginians get out of tough economic times.

Of the $15,000 check Williams wanted to give to his daughter, though, McDonnell said: “I thought it was exceptionally generous for him to consider doing that.” Because his daughter had wanted to pay for her own wedding, and because the check was supposed to go directly to her, he said he felt “that was probably OK.”

Before lunch, Robert F. McDonnell testified about an emotional note he wrote to his wife in September 2011, with their marriage at perhaps its low point. His wife, he said, did not respond. We brought you much of the text earlier, though U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer blocked McDonnell from reading it aloud. Here is the letter in full:

“I love you. Yesterday was one on (sic) the lowest points in my life. We have had a very hard year emotionally, despite a wonderful anniversary celebration. You are my soulmate. I love being married to you and having a family. We have shared much good life together (sic). I have made plenty of 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. You told me again yesterday that you would wreck my things and how bad I am. It hurt me to my core. I have asked and prayed to God so many times to take this anger away from you and heal whatever hurt is causing it …. some going back years and years. He has not yet answered those prayers. I often lie awake at night thinking what I can do to try to make things better. I admit that I do keep away from you sometimes and don’t talk to you about important things or problems to avoid confrontation. My whole life is spent trying to help my family and other people. Overall I am incredibly blessed to lead the life we have lead, and you are too. More great children, good jobs, material comforts and friends than most people ever have. I fight to continue to be humble and thankful for All God has done. I was very excited about this weekend to spend 3 days with you to do what we wanted. We started tough friday (sic) night but we agreed to a reset. I wanted yesterday to show we could work together. I planned to open gifts, walk to the river with you, talk to you(like you did when you bared your sweet soul a little about your childhood on the Aspen trip this summer) read, watch a movie and watch up on personal business. Somehow the best plans with us never work out. It makes me very sad. I am lonely sometimes. I want to be in love, not just watch movies about it. You are doing a really great job as First Lady … better than any I’ve seen and better than you probably expected as you were nervous taking the FLOVA job. I’m so proud of your public actions. Our private life though has great heartache. You tell me all the time how bad your life has been with me and how unhappy you are. I do not understand this. I am so spiritually and mentally exhausted from being yelled at. I don’t think you realize how you are affecting me and sometimes others with your tongue. As you told me many times and bought the book, “dont sweat the samll (sic) stuff”. And everything is small stuff(Gary Smalley). I get of you to think about conflict resolution in a peaceful manner. Ironically that was the focus of the readings at Church and Fr Jims homily yesterday. There is no problem we can’t work out if we are calm and talk nicely and respect each others position. I am NOT preaching! I love you and want to help make you happy and our family endure. I will do anything possible to try to fix our marriage if you will work with me. Today I will spend on the many tasks I need to do: working on Dads estate(sad), paying bills, 2010 taxes,student loans, getting our files in order, letters to kids , sandbridge properties, etc. And taking at least a little time to read something for my soul! I know you work hard too to run a good office. Let me know if you want to talk softly. Bob

Robert F. McDonnell said he had “no idea” that Jonnie R. Williams Sr. had taken his wife on a $20,000 designer shopping spree in New York in April 2011, even though he was in the city with them at that same time.

“She’d told me she’d gotten a couple dresses,” he said, maintaining that he was unaware of both the tab and the fact that Williams had picked it up.

The governor was also in the city when Maureen McDonnell and Williams hit Bergdorf Goodman and other high-end shops. But he said he was busy with his own jam-packed schedule, which included meetings with established and potential donors.

Items from Bergdorf Goodman. (U.S. attorney’s office)

Bob McDonnell said he knew that Williams was going to meet his wife, possibly for lunch and to show her several stores.

Williams had flaunted his ties to the fashion world in his first meeting with the McDonnells in 2009, arriving with a model in tow and indicating that he had a connection to famous designer Oscar de la Renta.

“He was going to show them a couple stores,” Bob McDonnell said, referring to his wife and her chief of staff, Mary-Shea Sutherland. Williams also bought Sutherland a $1,600 dress on the trip, something Bob McDonnell also said he was unaware of.

Defense attorney Henry Asbill asked: “Did you have any idea there was this rain-check conversation?”

“No idea,” McDonnell said, shaking his head.

“Rain check” was a reference to testimony from earlier in the trial about Williams’s offer, in that first meeting in 2009, to buy Maureen McDonnell a designer gown for her husband’s inauguration. Maureen McDonnell had wanted to take him up on the offer, but Bob McDonnell’s senior staff quashed the idea. Maureen McDonnell told him she’d take a rain check. And in April 2011, with a daughter’s wedding about a month away, she told Williams the time had come.

Bob McDonnell said he saw Maureen and Sutherland as they returned from their trip, two shopping bags in hand. He said he didn’t ask how much the first lady had spent.

“I figured I’d see it on the credit card [statement],” he said. Given their recent discussions about stressed finances, Bob McDonnell said he was confident that whatever she’d spent on the mother-of-the-bride dress and other wedding weekend attire would be “within appropriate limits.”

“I saw two bags they were carrying,” he said.

Bob McDonnell suggested that he never got another look at the bags. He was up early the next morning, leaving while Maureen was still asleep, to do to national television interviews and attend a fundraising lunch. The luggage was in the plane by the time he returned, and he got off the plane in Washington, while his wife flew on to Virginia.

Bob McDonnell said Williams never mentioned that he’d treated his wife to a $20,000 spree – even though after the day of shopping, the governor and Star executive sat side-by-side at a Union League event. And he said Williams would not have had to make such an expenditure to snag that prime seat beside Virginia’s chief executive: He’d already lent his plane to the governor so many times – in-kind donations worth a total of $70,000 to $80,000 – that he probably the biggest donor at the table.

McDonnell said he only found out about the $20,000 gift much later.

“I didn’t know until maybe a month after the investigation [started],” Bob McDonnell said.

Bob McDonnell also professed ignorance of just how expensive designer clothing can be, saying he “occasionally bought Maureen some things, but I shop at a department store and buy something for $100.”

For himself, he said, he shops at Jos. A Bank.

“That’s your designer?” Asbill quipped

The remark drew laughs from the governor’s supporters in the gallery but just a wan smile from Bob McDonnell.

Louis Vuitton pearl purse. (U.S. attorney’s office)

(U.S. attorney’s office)

​After a harrowing day of touring a tornado-ravaged area on April 29, 2011, Robert F. McDonnell sat down for dinner with his wife. They were joined by another couple: Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., and his wife, Celeste.

That the Williamses were invited over for dinner, itself, is interesting. McDonnell testified Thursday that he had only met the businessman three or four times before, though Maureen McDonnell, who arranged the get-together, had an interest in Williams and his nutritional supplement company. McDonnell said he “liked” Williams personally, but they were not yet friends, and his own interest was mainly in whether Williams’s company could help stimulate the Virginia economy.

“My interest was mostly in the job area,” McDonnell said.

McDonnell said said the foursome talked about a skydive his wife and daughter had taken that day with the Golden Knights, the U.S. Army parachute team. At some point, the daughter, Cailin McDonnell, stopped by. The group then talked briefly about Cailin’s wedding — which was five weeks away.

McDonnell said his daughter was excited to be getting married at the governor’s mansion, and he, at some point, showed off the courtyard where her reception would be.

McDonnell acknowledged, too, that Williams talked about his company, Star Scientific, and its product, Anatabloc. The governor said Williams highlighted the ongoing studies of the product in other states, and Williams’s wife talked of how the ingredient in Anatabloc — called anatabine — had helped cure a thyroid issue she had personally.

“He’s a good salesman,” McDonnell said of Williams, adding that he had heard much of the pitch before on a plane ride the two men took together. “He’s very enthusiastic about his product.”

McDonnell said there was some discussion of an event at the Roskamp Institute in Florida for Star Scientific, and Williams might have suggested it would be nice for the governor to appear there. McDonnell said he was interested in having “clinical trials and job opportunities in Virginia,” but of the Florida appearance: “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to fit that in.”

McDonnell said he was unaware of a wallet that Celeste Williams is said to have given to his wife at the dinner — one that matched a purse Jonnie Williams had bought for the first lady in New York — and “she would normally tell me something like that.” McDonnell said he also did not know to what extent his wife and Williams were talking then.

Robert F. McDonnell says he believed Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s $15,000 check for his daughter’s wedding was generous but figured the businessman could afford it.

McDonnell said he learned Williams had offered $15,000 to his daughter upon returning from a trade mission to Asia as governor in the middle of May 2011. His daughter was scheduled to get married on June 5. He said his wife, Maureen, told him Williams had extended the offer. She said she had already told their daughter Cailin about the offer and that Cailin had agreed to accept the money.

“I had to think about it,” he said. “It certainly was a very generous and large amount of money. We’d only known Mr. Williams at that point for about 18 months.”

But he also knew that Williams had purchased a $5,000 bottle of cognac at their first meeting in December 2009 and owned a private plane. “I knew Mr. Williams had the capacity,” he said.

What’s more, he also knew that his daughter wanted to pay for her wedding herself, as he and his wife had done. He said there was a family dispute over the issue because McDonnell wanted to pay for the wedding for her. But he knew his daughter and her husband were saving up. McDonnell said he knew from reviewing the contract for the wedding catering that it called for the event to cost about $15,000. McDonnell, in fact, had already made two deposits for the wedding totaling about $8,000. But he said he also knew there were likely to be “add-ons” to the contract price that could result in a more expensive event.

He said he would not have had difficulty paying the remainder of the catering bill, which was due 10 days before the wedding, indicating that he would have taken money from his savings account or used a credit card to take a cash advance. But he knew Cailin wanted to pay the bill. Williams’s gift, he knew, was intended to cover the costs of the reception.​

“I thought, if he wanted to provide that gift to my daughter, that was okay,” he said.

Williams wrote a $15,000 check from his family trust for catering at Cailin McDonnell’s wedding.

Robert F. McDonnell choked up on the stand just now while talking about not his broken marriage, but about a tornado victim he met on the same day he hosted Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and his wife for dinner at the governor’s mansion.

The former governor has been describing the busy day leading up to the dinner, which he said came about after he had suggested to his wife that they start doing some small-scale entertaining. They’d been hosting lots of big receptions, and Bob McDonnell thought having some intimate dinners with friends old and new might help bring sense of “normalcy” to their new live on Capitol Square.

On Maureen McDonnell’s list: Jonnie and Celeste Williams.

Defense attorney Henry Asbill asked Bob McDonnell to describe what else the governor had on his schedule the day he dined with the Williamses, April 29, 2011. Asbill was clearly intending to show that the dinner engagement was a mere blip on the busy governor’s calendar. And the events McDonnell ticked off for that day was certainly head-spinning.

He’d attended a funeral for the clerk of the House of Delegates, Bruce Jamerson, who’d taken his own life. He’d had a series of meetings to prepare him for a trade mission to China that he was about to embark on within a week. He’d had a reception at the mansion to celebrate a NASCAR taking place the next day.

And he’d also flown to Southwest Virginia to tour the wreckage of a deadly tornado that had torn through the area days earlier. Asbill displayed a photograph of the governor embracing a young man there and asked who was with him there.

“That’s Seth,” Bob McDonnell said. He paused and grew visibly emotional, then went on to say the young man had lost his grandmother to the storm. “That was the wreckage of her trailer.”

By the time dinner with his wife and the Williamses rolled around, McDonnell said he was spent.

“I have to say I was a little exhausted,” he said.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, left, listens to Lee and Cindy Wright on Friday, April 29, 2011, as they tell of of how their great aunt’s home was destroyed by the tornado that struck Glade Spring, Va. (AP Photo/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bob Brown)

Robert F. McDonnell’s testimony Thursday has been particularly emotional. He has described an intimate plea he sent to his wife, essentially saying he loved her and wanted to save their shattered marriage. He just finished describing an interaction he had with a young man whose grandmother was killed in a tornado — his voice breaking as he did so.

So how are jurors taking it?

About the same as they have taken testimony throughout the case.

Most are staring intently at the former governor — a few seemed to soften their gaze as his voice broke. At least two jurors on the end seem bored by the proceedings, looking down frequently. The emotion did not seem to captivate them particularly.

Robert F. McDonnell says that in October 2010, he learned much more about Jonnie R. Williams Sr. when the dietary supplement executive allowed him to use his private plane to fly to a political event for Meg Whitman in California.

Williams joined McDonnell for the flight back to Richmond — which McDonnell described as fairly common behavior for donors lending a plane to a campaign. He said he took no staff on the trip, so for a six hour flight, there was no one on the plane except him, Williams, a Virginia State Police officer and the pilot.

For that time, McDonnell said the two exchanged some chit-chat. They discussed that they were both 60; Williams had four children. (McDonnell has five.) Williams explained some of his business history, stretching back 30 years to his time selling cars in Fredericksburg, Va. as a young man.

But, McDonnell said, Williams spent most of the flight telling him about Star Scientific.

He said the businessman had brought a PowerPoint presentation and documents to explain how he believed the company had isolated a chemical found in tobacco that actually had health benefits and could reduce inflammation in the body.

“It was a pretty interesting discussion,” McDonnell said. But again, he said, donors commonly take time on donated air flights to explain their businesses or charities to the governor.

“Did Mr. Williams ask you for anything?” McDonnell’s defense attorney Henry Asbill asked.

“I don’t remember an ask. I do remember telling him that his story was interesting and said he ought to go meet with Dr. Hazel,” McDonnell said, referring to Secretary of Health Bill Hazel.

But McDonnell said he expected Hazel to do nothing at that meeting other than listen to Williams.

“This is something I would have done thousands of times as governor,” he said of asking a cabinet secretary to meet with a constituent.

When that meeting occurred a month later, McDonnell testified that he has no memory that either Hazel or Williams told him it had taken place in real time.

Likewise, when McDonnell was asked about being forwarded information about Star Scientific and the studies it sought to undertake in Virginia in that time frame, he said, “I don’t have any independent memory of that.”

Businessman Jonnie Williams arrives with his attorneys to testify in the trial of former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell late last month in Richmond. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Robert F. McDonnell left his first meeting Jonnie R. Williams Sr. fairly impressed.

The meeting in 2009 at the Four Seasons hotel in New York lasted only about 45 minutes, McDonnell testified, but some things stood out. He said Williams offered to buy an inaugural dress, and that he and Maureen McDonnell shared an interest in so-called “nutraceuticals” — something Williams’s company Star Scientific was promoting at the time.​

“I liked him,” McDonnell said of Williams. “He was gregarious. He was funny. He was charming. In my mind, he was a Virginia businessman who had some ideas about creating jobs.”

McDonnell’s testimony on the meeting is important because he must convince jurors that his relationship with Williams was above board — even if Williams did not think so. McDonnell has contended he treated Williams like he would any other Virginia business executive.

Robert F. McDonnell’s chief political adviser, Phil Cox, has testified that on Christmas Eve 2009, he received a call from his boss’s wife. She told him that she knew he had nixed the idea of Jonnie R. Williams Sr. buying her an Oscar de la Renta gown for her husband’s inauguration the next month, and she was extremely angry. Cox said that during the call, Maureen McDonnell told him that she believed he was being disloyal and did not have her husband’s interests at heart.

The former Virginia governor now tells the jury that when he heard about that call, he was livid.

“I was furious with Maureen,” he said. “No one had been more loyal to me than Phil Cox,” said McDonnell. He described some of the sacrifices Cox made for his campaign, including the dissolution of Cox’s own marriage.

“To find out that my wife was questioning his loyalty would make me very, very upset,” he said. “Phil loves me. It was inexcusable.”

“I said, ‘you can’t treat people like this. This is wrong,'” he testified. “I said, ‘this is the end of the dress issue.'”

Jurors have already seen an e-mail exchange between the first lady and a governor’s staffer in December 2009 in which Maureen McDonnell complained of the family’s financial woes and of her not being able to accept an inaugural dress from Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

Now they have heard the governor’s analysis of it.

In the e-mail, Maureen McDonnell complains of “unconscionable” credit card debt, and claims her husband is screaming at her about it. She seems upset she cannot accept the dress.

The former governor himself testified Thursday the e-mail was “half true.” Indeed, he said, he had asked his wife to tamp down her spending — and acknowledged their credit card bills were high — but he insisted “I don’t scream.”

“I wouldn’t scream at her,” Robert F. McDonnell testified. “Whatever it was, it just seemed like there was too much stuff that she was buying.”

McDonnell went on to say his family was not broke and had raised about $1.2 million to cover inaugural expenses in particular, but he knew then he was “going to embark on a plan of reducing this credit card debt as we got into the governorship.” He said some of that debt stemmed from the campaign — but the testimony could help prosecutors argue financial woes led him to seek Williams’s money​.

And McDonnell offered prosecutors perhaps another point that could help their case, saying, “I manage the family’s finances, and I was aware of what our financial situation was.” That could help defense attorneys argue that his wife was misinformed, but prosecutors might use it to show he was well aware of the first $50,000 loan that Williams gave to his wife in 2011. It is unclear, yet, what the governor has to say about that topic.

Robert F. McDonnell recalled sitting at the Four Seasons hotel with his wife and Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in December 2009, intending to thank the businessman for loaning his plane to the gubernatorial campaign. He said the topic of what his wife, Maureen, would wear at the inauguration the next month soon came up, in part because Maureen had an appointment with a seamstress “in that hotel.”

“Mr. Williams immediately piped up and said you need to get a really good dress, and I know Oscar de la Renta,” McDonnell testified Thursday.

The account puts McDonnell fully at odds with Williams, who testified earlier that his connection to the prominent designer was more roundabout, and he initially intended not to buy the first lady a dress, but to perhaps procure a used one from a runway show through a male model friend who was also at the hotel meeting.

The way the governor tells it, though, Williams produced his cellphone to display what he claimed was Oscar de la Renta’s number, then “actually placed the call.”

“He actually dialed a number and left a message,” the governor testified. “My clear understanding was he said, ‘I want to get you a gown.'”

Even then, though, Robert F. McDonnell testified that “wasn’t going to happen.”

“I wasn’t going to let that happen,” McDonnell said.

The issue was one of optics. Because the economy was struggling, the governor and his staff had already arranged for a more modest inaugural ceremony. To have the first lady in an Oscar de la Renta dress might have been viewed as inappropriate, McDonnell said.

“I had just campaigned on a job and economic development platform because I knew people were hurting,” McDonnell said. “To have my wife in a New York designer gown was really at odds with what we were trying to accomplish for the inaugural theme.”

McDonnell said he did not reject the offer immediately — fearing that doing so might spark a public argument — but he later informed his wife, “We can’t get an Oscar de la Renta dress from somebody I didn’t even know.”

“I figured we’d just tell him no at some point,” McDonnell said.

Robert F. McDonnell’s defense lawyer just posed the most awkward question imaginable, and he didn’t beat around the bush, either.

“Do you think your wife had a physical affair with Jonnie Williams?” Henry Asbill asked the former governor.

McDonnell answered in the hushed tones he’s used all day as questioning has dwelled on the touchy subject of his marriage.

“I don’t believe so,” he said.

Asbill pressed on: “Do you think your wife had a strong emotional attachment to Jonnie Williams?”

“Yes,” he said.

Asbill asked, “Was she getting that kind of emotional support from you?”

Here, McDonnell’s answer was almost a whisper: “No.”

McDonnell went on to say that he knew his wife had struck up a friendship with Williams, one sparked by their mutual interest in nutritional supplements. And he thought she had “a healthy bond” with the married father of four, a “charming funny guy” who seemed to make his wife “light up.”

“I trusted Jonnie Williams,” McDonnell said. “I liked him the first time I met him. He was an entrepreneur, a dreamer.”

The governor said the friendship was actually a plus for him, because his wife would be a in better mood after interacting with Williams.

This May 5, 2011 photo shows Mary-Shea Sutherland, center, executive assistant for Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell, left, and Jonnie R. Williams Sr. during a reception at the Executive Mansion in Richmond, Va. (Michaele White/ Office of the Governor of Virginia via AP)

Robert F. McDonnell moved out of the family’s suburban Richmond home shortly before the trial began and has been staying with his parish priest in the St. Patrick’s Church rectory.

“I knew there was no way I could go home after a day in court and have to rehash the day’s events with my wife,” he testified.

The former Virginia governor said he moved out of his house about a week before the trial. Living away from Maureen McDonnell would make it easier for him to review documents and prepare for the next day in court.

“I had to be fresh,” he said.

The revelation about the couple’s living arrangements came after defense attorney asked the former governor to describe the current state of their marriage.

“We don’t communicate much,” he said. “It’s basically on hold. The last 18 months have been incredibly difficult. The strain of the investigation, indictment has just been a crushing event in our lives.”

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, right, arrives at federal court earlier this week. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Robert F. McDonnell just finished testifying about an emotional note he wrote to his wife in September 2011, with their marriage at perhaps its worst. Here’s as much text as we could copy from the screen in the courtroom. U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer prevented the former Virginia governor from reading it aloud in its entirety.

“I love you. Yesterday was one on (sic) the lowest points in my life. We have had a very hard year emotionally, despite a wonderful anniversary celebration. You are my soulmate. I love being married to you and having a family. We have shared much good life together (sic). I have made plenty of 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. You told me again yesterday that you would wreck my things and how bad I am. It hurt me to my core. I have asked and prayed to God so many times to take this anger away and heal whatever is causing it … some going back years and years. He has not yet answered those prayers.”

“I admit that I do keep away from you sometimes…”

“I want to be in love, not just watch movies about it.”

“You tell me all the time how bad your life has been with me and how unhappy you are. I do not understand this. I am so spiritually and mentally exhausted from being yelled at.”

After Maureen McDonnell’s first chief of staff left in October 2011, a second came and went in the space of a month.

Robert F. McDonnell said the turmoil concerned him. Even more troubling was word that the entire Executive Mansion staff had signed a letter in early 2012, threatening to quit if the first lady’s behavior toward them did not improve.

The letter had been addressed directly to the Maureen McDonnell, but the governor’s senior staff intercepted it. Asked if he was made aware of the letter, Bob McDonnell said that his chief of staff, Martin Kent, had briefed him and that he eventually read it himself.

All this erupted as the governor was in the midst of what he described as the “most difficult” General Assembly session of his governorship. The GOP had taken control of the evenly divided Senate with help from the tie-breaking power of the Republican lieutenant governor, creating a lot of “partisan angst,” he said. The governor was trying to get his first two-year budget through the legislature. Without it, the government shuts down.

“The worst thing a governor can do is have a fiscal breakdown in the commonwealth,” he said.

At the same time, he had new responsibilities as chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association and as a surrogate for presidential candidate Mitt Romney. On top of that, he had to fulfill his duties as executor of his later father’s estate. He was also trying to help his sister through her divorce and pick up the real-estate management duties that her husband had been handling.

“And now I’ve got a disaster at the governor’s mansion,” he said.

“I’m a pretty strong guy, but that was a lot,” he said. “It was okay. I signed up for this. But the letter and the crisis in the first lady’s office was another hit.”

In early 2012, a management consultant recommended that then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell have his wife seek counseling.

McDonnell told jurors Thursday that he “listened” to the consultant’s advice, but knew it would be fruitless.

McDonnell said he had “talked to my wife several times before about counseling,” and she did not want to do it.

“Her reaction was, ‘We’re not going to be able to keep that private,'” McDonnell testified.

McDonnell’s description of his exchange with management consultant James Burke came as he continued to lay bare the details of his troubled marriage.

Responding to questions about early 2012, McDonnell said he had become “emotionally, physically unavailable” to his wife, and was sometimes frustrated by her requests. He said the first lady would ask him to personally edit speeches she was to give, and he would tell her that was a job more suited for her chief of staff or a speechwriter.

“I wasn’t very good with her about that, and I know I pushed her away,” McDonnell testified.

McDonnell testified that he called in Burke because “the problems were exceeding my skillset when it came to organizing the first lady’s office.” He said while the office seemed to be functioning well in public, “the private part was a disaster.”

Maureen McDonnell, wife of former Gov. Bob McDonnell, arrives at the federal courthouse in Richmond last week. (AP Photo/The Virginian-Pilot, Steve Earley)

Robert F. McDonnell said his relationship with his wife became even more strained following the departure of the first lady’s chief of staff, Mary-Shea Sutherland, in the fall of 2011.

He testified that Maureen McDonnell informed him that Sutherland had been negotiating for a job with dietary supplement executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. behind her back.

“She was very very upset,” McDonnell said. He said his wife accused Sutherland of using the governor’s political database to find potential clients. “Maureen expressed a great sense of betrayal.”

The former governor said he was troubled. He had trusted Sutherland and believed she had done a good job assisting the first lady. He was interested in seeing whether the situation could be rectified and Sutherland might stay at the mansion. As for any talks Sutherland held with Williams, he said, “I had no knowledge.

He said he spoke to his own chief of staff, Martin Kent, and said, “This is a bad situation.” They decided to sit down jointly with Maureen and Sutherland and see if “the relationship could be salvaged.”

“‘All things considered, I’d like her to stay,'” he said he told Kent.

But McDonnell said that it became clear during the meeting that the relationship could not be fixed.

“We had to effectuate her termination,” McDonnell said of Sutherland.

Mary-Shea Sutherland, former chief of staff to former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell, leaves the federal courthouse in Richmond on Aug. 6. (AP Photo/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bob Brown)

Sometime in 2011, according to Robert F. McDonnell, communications with his wife became even more strained as she harped about their staffs.

He testified that he told his wife that they had hired good people who needed to be treated with respect, particularly Maureen McDonnell’s own aides in the governor’s mansion.

“It became increasingly clear that I was not the right messenger for Maureen,” he said. “She would yell at me. She would tell me I was taking staff’s side, that I didn’t know what it was really going on over there.”

When he tried to provide advice on her initiatives, he testified, she would respond: “‘I’m not staff. I’m your wife.'”

Increasingly, he said, he would avoid the governor’s mansion, intentionally not ending his work for the day until he knew she would be asleep or otherwise trying to avoid contact.

“I remember telling Maureen, ‘I can’t deal with this. We’ve got great staff. We’ve got great people.’…I couldn’t come home to listen to that,” McDonnell told jurors.

“Is it fair to say that for those four years, you put your marriage on hold?” defense attorney Henry Asbill asked.

McDonnell paused. “Yes,” he said. “I just couldn’t make progress.”

Days before her husband was set to become the 71st governor of Virginia, Maureen McDonnell found out her father had terminal cancer, her husband testified Thursday.

That kicked off an especially tumultuous year for the couple as they struggled with a mix of financial worries and personal grief in 2010, Robert F. McDonnell said Thursday.

McDonnell testified that when his wife’s father died later that year — only about a year after her mother had died — Maureen McDonnell confided in him: “I feel like an orphan.”

“She sobbed for weeks about her dad,” McDonnell said. “It just really, really hurt.”

Then, the troubles were compounded by money worries, McDonnell said. He said his wife received a check for just more than $25,000, and he encouraged her to spend it paying down their “pretty significant” credit card bills. The first lady, he said, preferred to buy stock for their children, something she had long talked about doing.

McDonnell said he fought with his wife, and she eventually left the room in which they were talking and returned with the check. McDonnell said she threw it down, telling him: “Here, pay the bills.”

Which is what they did. It is a decision, however, that the former governor seems to regret.

“That was the wrong decision for my wife and our marriage,” he said. “It was her money.”

The testimony could cut both ways. It might bolster prosecutors’ case that the McDonnells were experiencing such financial turmoil that they turned to Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for help.

But it also could cast the governor and his wife as sympathetic figures and show that they did not agree on important financial matters — perhaps undercutting the notion that they conspired together to get Williams’s money.

While daunted by the role she would have to play as Virginia’s first lady, Maureen McDonnell was most worried about how little time her newly elected husband would have for her once he became governor, Robert F. McDonnell testified.

“That was what she was most anxious about,” he said Thursday.

McDonnell referred back to a story he’d told jurors on Wednesday, about the day after he won the governor’s race. He was exuberant as he fielded congratulatory calls from President Obama and others, while a fretful Maureen yelled at him about what she would wear that day.

“Maureen was fearful and anxious about what that day and the rest of her life would hold,” McDonnell said.

Even amid her fear though, Maureen McDonnell showed signs that she was getting excited about what she could accomplish as first lady. Bob McDonnell thought she would be able to do well as long as she had someone she liked and could rely on as a top staffer. The person eventually hired for that job was Mary-Shea Sutherland, a key prosecution witness in the trial.

Bob McDonnell was confident that with that hire, his wife would be in good hands.

But more than ever, what little time the couple had to talk was consumed by logistics – now about the coming inauguration rather than shuttling children to sports and lessons.

“The quality of the communication was not particularly good,” he said.

McDonnell was asked how that poor communication had manifested itself at that time. And Bob McDonnell said there were “a couple very unpleasant conversations.”

About? McDonnell was asked.

“An inauguration dress,” he said.

Jurors have heard all about the discussions between Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and the governor’s staff about a designer dress she allegedly wanted the Richmond businessman to buy for her to wear during the governor’s inauguration.

Now they know the governor’s thoughts on the matter.

Robert F. McDonnell testified Thursday that he and Maureen McDonnell had a “couple of arguments” about the dress in December 2009. Though he did not go into great detail, he said, “It was very poor communication, and we had a couple unpleasant conversations about that.”

McDonnell — as he did Wednesday — said his wife was “uncomfortable with this new role” of first lady and yelling was often a part of their talks.

But at defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill’s questioning, McDonnell said his wife did most of the yelling.

“I typically don’t yell at anyone,” he said.

Robert F. McDonnell told jurors Thursday that he urged his wife to put her home-based vitamin business on hold after he won the governor’s office, partly because he thought she’d be too busy as first lady and partly because of potential conflicts of interest.

“I just didn’t think the first lady of Virginia ought to be doing this kind of business,” he said, referring to it as a “direct sales” and “multilevel” marketing venture.

Was she receptive to that? defense attorney Henry Asbill asked.

“I would say she understood but this was her 30-year passion,” McDonnell testified. “She understood, but she was not that happy about that instruction.”

Did she appreciate your telling her what she could or couldn’t do? Asbill asked.

“She’s my wife, not a staff member,” McDonnell said. But he said he thought discontinuing the business was something that would be best for both of them, as “partners.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, look over their ballots at the 2009 Virginia State Republican Convention at the Coliseum in Richmond on May 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Robert F. McDonnell says Maureen McDonnell’s stress level rose as he ran for and then won the 2009 campaign for governor. He said for the first time, she had an assigned staff person or two to assist her.

“We would get reports that she would yell at staff or be disappointed with staff,” he said, noting that she went through two or three people before finding the right fit. He said he would try to talk to his wife, but was traveling a great deal and campaign manager Phil Cox largely dealt with the issue.

After his election, Janet Vestal Kelly came to him and said that she could only join the administration if she did not have to work with Maureen. Kelly was McDonnell’s longest serving aide and he wanted to name her secretary of the commonwealth.

“That really hurt,” he said. “For her to state that to me…was really tough.”

McDonnell said Kelly told him his wife’s issue was “temperament.”

“It was anxiety. It was sweating the small stuff,” he said.

McDonnell lawyer Henry Asbill asked if Kelly had told him that she believed Maureen McDonnell had emotional issues and could use medical help.

“I believe she did,” he said. “I know she did at a later time.”

McDonnell said he was uncertain if that’s what his wife needed. She had lost her mother unexpectedly during the campaign, and he himself had been away. “I wasn’t quite sure,” he said.​

“She had sought some in Virginia Beach before we moved up from there,” he said.

But Asbill asked him, now, as he was taking office as governor, did his wife seem receptive to go into counseling?

“No,” McDonnell responded.

Former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell, left, talks with her Daughter Cailin Young, center, and her attorney Heather Martin, as they arrive at federal court in Richmond on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

When Robert F. McDonnell was attorney general, he said he warned his wife “early on” about the potential conflicts that might exist between her work promoting so-called “nutraceuticals” and his job in state government. He said he asked her to be “more discreet” in how she promoted the products.

Maureen McDonnell, though, apparently did not always heed or like her husband’s advice.

At one point, McDonnell said, his wife used an e-mail list from her husband’s gubernatorial campaign to promote products she was trying to sell for a company called Nu Skin.

“That e-mail that she sent out was using that list and actually talking a little bit about her products,” McDonnell testified. “I felt that was completely inappropriate.”

McDonnell said he talked to his wife, and “told her, ‘you can’t do that,'” even though he personally took nutraceuticals and he recognized his own career was impinging on his wife’s.

“I know at that time she was not happy about that,” he said. “I was telling Maureen because of my career, and my political campaign, you have to have a separation. … Essentially the furtherance of my own business was hurting her business, and I think that was not well received.”

When Robert F. McDonnell became Virginia’s attorney general, he uprooted his life in Virginia Beach to head to Richmond. While his wife and children initially stayed south so the kids could finish school, they eventually all moved to the state capital to support McDonnell as he embarked on a job as the state’s top lawyer.

It was not easy, McDonnell testified Thursday.

“That move, was that easy or was that difficult for your wife,” defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked.

“It was difficult for both of us,” the former governor responded.

McDonnell seems to be building the narrative that as his political ambitions and successes increased, his marriage deteriorated. He testified that though his job as attorney general allowed his wife to live together 12 months out of the year (when he was a delegate, he spent a few months away from home while the legislature was in session), that did not help matters. He said his wife’s discussions became mostly limited to talking about their kids, schedules, soccer games and even her role on his gubernatorial campaign, rather than their own romantic connection.

“We spent more time talking about sort-of the business of living, as opposed to our relationship,” McDonnell said.

“It hurt the marriage, it hurt the communications, because I was working very long hours at the attorney general’s office,” he said. “I put my heart and soul into that job. It was a remarkable opportunity to serve in that capacity.”

Former Gov. Bob McDonnell is continuing to lay out how tensions grew in their marriage as his political career continued. He said that when he decided to run for attorney general in 2005, a campaign that began in 2002, his wife, Maureen, was supportive–but she had concerns.

“At the time, she expressed some reservations. She would ask what is this going to be like? What will a campaign be like?” he said.

He said his wife ended up liking some parts of that statewide effort, including social events and meeting interesting people. But other parts of the campaign made her anxious.

“Some of the public events, where we were in the spotlight or where the was press around…The public life was one that caused more stress,” he said.

And there was another thing that was difficult, McDonnell testified. He said his wife had been involved in various businesses selling dietary supplements and vitamins–“nutraceuticals” as he calls them–for years. But he told his wife she would have to curtail those efforts because of his campaign.

“To avoid conflicts, we would have to be sure the marketing didn’t run over to the campaign or the public events that we were doing,” he said.

The early years of Robert F.  and Maureen McDonnell’s marriage were an “extended honeymoon” as the young couple went off to live in Germany, the former governor told jurors.

But things began to change when they returned from Bob McDonnell’s overseas Army deployment in May 1981 and started their family, he said. They were living in Georgia, with him working at a hospital supply firm and Maureen McDonnell waiting tables, when the first of their five children was born.

They were good partners. Bob McDonnell recalled his wife typing up his papers as he worked his way through law school and trying to support the growing family with a toy franchise of some sort. Pregnant with twins, Maureen McDonnell went door-to-door as her husband ran for state delegate in 1991.

But they had little time for each other. Bob McDonnell had growing responsibilities as an up-and-coming delegate, a new job in private law firm and Army Reserve obligations. Maureen McDonnell was holding down the fort with five young children and a home-based vitamin business.

There was no time for dates or even much conversation beyond conveying the logistics of carting kids around Virginia Beach.

“Soccer and swimming and music lessons and the different obligations we had with the children,” he said. “We began to focus on their needs and the logistics of what they were doing.”

It became clear to Bob McDonnell during family trip to Disney World in the mid-1990s that their relationship was strained.

“Maureen was very anxious” even during that get-away, Bob McDonnell said.

With former Gov. Bob McDonnell on the witness stand for a second day to talk about his marriage, the packed courtroom has fallen eerily silent, with reporters and spectators seeming to hang on his every word.

So many people have come to the Richmond courtroom that a court security officer is turning some away and directing them to a different room where a video feed of the trial is being displayed.

With McDonnell on the stand, it is perhaps no surprise, but the room is probably more full than at any other point during the trial — save when jurors were being selected, and reporters were allowed to stand along the walls.

After professing discomfort about discussing his marriage on the witness stand, Robert F. McDonnell began to describe for jurors how he met and married Maureen McDonnell.

The meeting came sometime in July 1973, when he was home on a break from college at the University of Notre Dame. He was at a high school friend’s house when said he saw the future first lady and asked her out “a couple times,” only to be turned away.

“But I persevered,” he said, drawing a laugh.

McDonnell said he and Maureen soon began dating long distance: he was at Notre Dame, while she was living in Northern Virginia, so they saw one another on his school breaks. He said they got engaged after his junior year, and married soon after he graduated.

The first years, he said, were “very good.”

Today is not going to be a comfortable one for former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell.

As the 19th day of his trial on federal corruption charges began, his  attorney, Henry “Hank” Asbill, asked him if it would be hard talking about his marriage.

“It’s going to be very, very difficult,” McDonnell said, his voice growing almost inaudible. “It’s going to be hard for me to talk about.”

McDonnell said despite living in the public eye for many years, he tried to keep two aspects of his life private: his marriage and his finances.

That is particularly important because if he is to convince jurors his marriage was broken — and he and his wife were thus not able to conspire — he must address other witnesses’ testimony that he and Maureen McDonnell seemed happy in public.

Day 19 of the McDonnell trial will start with perhaps the moment all of Richmond has been waiting for: Robert F. McDonnell, on the witness stand, answering questions about what his attorneys have characterized as his broken marriage.

The details are sure to be salacious. In his opening statement, McDonnell defense attorney John Brownlee promised that the former governor would read aloud to jurors an intimate e-mail in which he appealed to his wife, Maureen, to “help save the marriage.” Brownlee said the plea “fell upon blind eyes and deaf ears” because the night it was received, the first lady was “distracted with other interests.”

One can only speculate about what those other interests might have been.

And while the testimony will be captivating on a visceral level, it is also of vital importance to the case. Defense attorneys for both Robert and Maureen McDonnell have asserted that the couple’s marriage was so dysfunctional that they were barely speaking, let alone conspiring together to seek the largesse of Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Maureen McDonnell’s defense attorney has even said his client had a “crush” on the businessman and was seeking his attention, rather than his money.

Whether jurors believe the governor when he fills in the details behind those claims will be pivotal. Other witnesses have testified that the governor seemed to love his wife, whom he was affectionate toward in public. The two had a joint birthday party just weeks ago. Can the governor convince the seven men and five women of the jury that the public displays were part of a facade, and he and Maureen McDonnell were barely speaking behind closed doors?

The proceedings begin at 9:45 a.m.

On Wednesday, former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell took the stand at his federal corruption trial and began laying out the narrative that will shape his defense — that he did nothing more for a dietary supplement company and its chief executive than he would have for any other state business.

There will probably be no more important moment in the trial; legal experts say McDonnell’s testimony over the coming days will determine in large part whether he and his wife end up in federal prison.

See the full story and the updates from yesterday’s liveblog.