Updates: Day 22 of the McDonnell corruption trial

Before closing court for the day, Judge James R. Spencer gave jurors — and the rest of us — an outline on what’s left in the corruption trial of Robert F. and Maureen McDonnell, now that the former governor’s testimony has ended.

He said McDonnell’s attorneys have one more witness to put on the stand (one of his lawyer’s stood to say that witness’s testimony would not take long).

After that, Maureen McDonnell’s lawyer William Burck is expected to put several witnesses on the stand in the former first lady’s defense. (He stood to say he anticipates his case will take about three hours).

Finally, Spencer indicated, prosecutors will have the opportunity to present a rebuttal case. Neither the judge nor prosecutors provided information about how long they expect that to take.

“Slowly, but surely, we’re getting there,” Spencer told jurors.

Court will resume at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday.

After nearly 24 hours on the witness stand, former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell closed his testimony repeating a couple of key points. He said he regretted taking so much from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., echoing an earlier statement that he allowed his life “to get out of balance.”

But in response to a question from his lawyer Henry “Hank” Asbill, McDonnell once again insisted Williams never asked for anything. “He did not,” McDonnell asserted.

“Are you 100 percent sure of that?” Asbill asked.

“Yes,” McDonnell said. But, he added, that he conducted an personal analysis with each gift and loan extended by Williams, as he did with all donors: Would it unduly influence his decision making? McDonnell said of Williams, he believed he could accept those items because the businessman was not seeking anything.

“Do you think you or your family took too many gifts or loans from Jonnie Williams?” Asbill asked.

“Yes,” McDonnell said.

“Do you regret that?” Asbill asked. “Yes,” McDonnell replied. “I only knew part of the gifts at the time because some of them were not related to me. But I’m responsible for my family.”

“I, as governor, allowed by life to get out of balance,” he said, indicating his judgment was off-center regarding the gifts of which he was aware. “That was my error.”

Finally, Asbill asked, why did McDonnell provide so much detail about his problematic marriage on the stand? The former governor started to explain that the charges in the case allege that he was in a criminal conspiracy with his wife. A prosecutor objected, so Asbill rephrased his question:

“Did you feel you had to do it to defend yourself?” Asbill asked.

“Yes, I did,” McDonnell said.

And, with that, Asbill was done and McDonnell stepped down from the witness stand.

Defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill has pressed Robert F. McDonnell again whether he was willing to disclose his relationship with Jonnie R. Williams Sr. on his state financial forms and, again, McDonnell says he was.

In response to questions from Asbill, McDonnell insisted that he complied with state laws — disclosing the loan from Williams to his wife in 2011 in the required format. He omitted references to $15,000 in wedding catering costs for his daughter because the form does not require disclosing gifts to family members.

Asbill asked, “with the exception of a coupla’ golf games,” did he comply with state law in all instances?

McDonnell said that he had.

“Have you ever been accused of violating state law with regards to the [state of economic interest]?” Asbill asked.

“No,” McDonnell replied.

“Did you think that Mr. Dry was suggesting yesterday that you violated state law?” Asbill asked.

“Objection,” prosecutor Michael Dry interjected. Judge James R. Spencer sustained the objection.

A reminder: Richmond Commonwealth Attorney Michael Herring conducted an investigation into whether McDonnell had violated state law. He closed that investigation right after McDonnell was charged federally, indicating that any state charges would be “subsumed and covered by the evidence in support of the federal investigation.”

Herring said then that he “would not feel comfortable” saying whether he thought McDonnell broke state law. But asked whether Virginia residents should conclude that state investigators had ended the probe because they decided that McDonnell had complied with the law, Herring said, “No.”

We have just heard a little more – a very little — about Maureen McDonnell’s alleged history of making inappropriate requests for money.

That topic was first brought up Monday during cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry. The prosecutor raised the matter, without going into detail, when he suggested Robert F. McDonnell should have known that his wife might be asking businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for things since she’d had a history of making inappropriate requests.

The former governor confirmed that she’s made some inappropriate requests but indicated that they dated back many years. No one elaborated.

But on the stand just now, under questioning from his own lawyer, McDonnell said that his wife made requests on “a couple of occasions” in 1988 and 1989 when he was in law school.

Defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked McDonnell if he knew for certain whether his wife had made any inappropriate requests of Williams: “I don’t,” he said.

He was asked specifically if McDonnell knew his wife had asked Williams for the first of two $50,000 loans, or if Williams had simply offered up the money because he was already giving a $15,000 check to pay for a McDonnell family wedding.

“Who solicited whom?” Asbill asked. “I don’t know for sure,” McDonnell replied.

Asbill also entered a 402-page document into evidence. The record was made up entirely of photographs of the then-governor appearing at ribbon cuttings and other business-related events with a company logo in the background, on the rostrum or otherwise in view.

The point behind the presentation was to combat the notion that McDonnell had ever done anything out of the ordinary for Star Scientific.

Williams’s company did not have the governor’s permission to post a photo of McDonnell, smiling and holding a bottle of its dietary supplement Anatabloc, on the company’s Web site, he testified.

Robert F. McDonnell’s lawyer has just taken up a question that prosecutor Michael Dry had raised on cross-examination.

Dry had asked several times about whether McDonnell had informed state legal counsel or other top staffers about his financial entanglements with Williams. McDonnell had said no.

Defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked the former governor why he had never clued his staffers in that he had been engaged, as Dry had suggested, in “some sort of an illegal quid pro quo.”

“Because I wasn’t,” he said.

Asbill also got McDonnell to say that the Internal Revenue Service has never challenged the way he had reported the loans.

Defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill has turned his attention to a letter written to the then-governor by Star Scientific executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in June 2011.

In the letter, Williams described his desire to see studies conducted at public universities in Virginia of his company’s new dietary supplement.

Prosecutors have pointed to the letter repeatedly to demonstrate that Robert F. McDonnell knew exactly what Williams wanted during the time the businessman was showering the then-governor and his family with gifts and loans.

Asbill asked McDonnell to turn his attention to the last line of the letter: “Once you have had a chance to review this, please have someone on your staff contact me,” Williams wrote.

“Did you ever have anyone on your staff contact Jonnie Williams in response to this letter?” Asbill asked.

“No,” McDonnell said.

“Ever?” Asbill said.

“No,” McDonnell repeated.

Robert F. McDonnell has testified repeatedly that he did not tell his subordinates about gifts and loans received from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. because he did not discuss his personal finances with his employees.

But now he added another reason: He said he never liked to discuss donor status with staff because he didn’t think money should play a role in their decision making.

“My view has always been that government should be money-blind and colorblind,” he said. If a staffer knew a person’s status as a donor, “That could either help or hurt that person’s treatment in front of government.”

McDonnell said he believed everyone should have access to government, regardless of whether they had or had not given gifts or campaign donations.

At the questioning of defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill, Robert F. McDonnell addressed, point by point, some of the most damaging pieces of evidence brought forth by prosecutors’ questions.

Based on the idea that McDonnell was personally liable for the $70,000 in loans that Jonnie R. Williams Sr. gave his real estate company, and thus, should have listed them on personal financial statements, Asbill asked, “Were there ever any personal guarantees that you gave for the Jonnie Williams loans to MoBo [the real estate company]?”

“No, neither orally or in writing,” McDonnell responded.

On the point about Williams making a bad investment in giving McDonnell the loans and doing so only because the then-governor was helping him, Asbill asked, “Did Mr. Williams get his money back per the agreement?”

“Yes, I paid him back with interest last year,” McDonnell responded. He went on to say MoBo had never failed to repay a debt in nine years, and he personally had never failed to repay a debt “in my adult life.”

Since prosecutors brought up the interview with Sean Hannity where McDonnell in which he said “You can’t spend more than you have for any period of time. You go broke,” despite his real estate company losing tens of thousands each year, Asbill also asked: Wasn’t that comment about the state budget? And, “did you, in fact, balance the state budget?”

“Four years in a row,” McDonnell responded.

Robert F. McDonnell has testified again that he had no idea his secretary of health had concerns about businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s role in shaping an event for health-care leaders at the governor’s mansion in February 2012.

Secretary of Health Bill Hazel’s testimony was one of the most dramatic moments of the prosecution’s case. Hazel said he couldn’t think of another situation like what he observed with Williams, who seemed to have unusual access at the mansion.

“Dr. Hazel never told me there was a flap over invitations,” McDonnell testified Tuesday, in response to questions from his own attorney. “That wouldn’t normally be the kind of thing he’d come to see me about.”

He said he didn’t hire Hazel to be a “yes man,” in Asbill’s words, praising the doctor as “skilled” and “very independent.” “That’s why I hired him,” McDonnell said.

This line of questioning, defense attorneys hope, will lead jurors to conclude Hazel might have come to his own opinion about the event honestly but it may not have reflected reality or what others perceived. McDonnell has repeatedly testified that the role Williams played at the event was not unusual.

Asserting Hazel’s independence helps McDonnell on another front. In November 2010, McDonnell arranged a meeting for Williams with the health secretary. Asbill asked him: Was Hazel the kind of guy who would be guaranteed to just give Williams something once a meeting was set? McDonnell responded indeed, he was not.

During questioning by his own defense attorney, Robert F. McDonnell is working to bolster his claim that his marriage was so broken that he could not conspire with his wife to solicit the largesse of Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

Of the 18 trips they took together over a roughly two-year stretch, McDonnell said he and Maureen McDonnell went on just one alone, and there was significant tension during that vacation — as there were on many.

“There was not a lot of communication during that time,” McDonnell testified. “We spent a lot of time reading.”

McDonnell testified that an another trip in 2011, he actually confided in his oldest daughter, Jeanine, now 33, about some of his marital woes. She has not been called to testify yet, though perhaps she will be to support her father’s account.

“I told her I was worried about her mom because of these chronic flashes of anger,” McDonnell testified. He said he later told his daughter they should “try to do everything that we could to embrace and encourage Maureen to stop the anger.”

Defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill asked how many times, on their many vacations, had McDonnell and his wife discussed “the nature and extent of her relationship with Jonnie Williams.”

“Probably none,” McDonnell said, his voice flattening after a long pause.

Robert F. McDonnell walked hand-in-hand with his wife at least twice when they appeared in court in the several months before the trial. At least once he shielded Maureen McDonnell from the rain with an umbrella. The touching moments were caught on camera, and then used by prosecutors to try to dismantle the McDonnells’ so-called broken marriage defense at their federal corruption trial.

So what does the former governor have to say about the photos, in light of what he has testified about the near failure of his marriage?

In sum: McDonnell said he and his wife leaned on one another during a difficult time. And he said he did not know then the depth of her relationship with businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

“I’ve known Maureen for 41 years, and we’ve had some very, very difficult times over the last 10,” McDonnell said, responding to questions from his defense attorney, Henry “Hank” Asbill.

“To be charged with 14 felonies, it was just a crushing experience for my wife and I,” he continued. “We knew in our hearts that we had not done anything improper, wrong or illegal, and we wanted to support each other.”

Asbill then asked him if he knew when he appeared in court in January and the spring of this year, the depth of his wife’s contact with Williams. Jurors know the first lady and the businessman exchanged 1,200 texts and calls over the period of the indictment.

“Have you learned more than you knew in real time?” Asbill asked.

“Yes, I have,” McDonnell said.

Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, leave the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 24 in Richmond. McDonnell and his wife Maureen pleaded not guilty to a 14-count criminal indictment from federal grand jury charging that the couple violated federal corruption laws. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Defense attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill has returned former governor Robert F. McDonnell to the issue of disclosure: Why would he include one gift from Richmond businessman Bill Goodwin on his annual form, but strike out a $23,000 vacation from the same person on the very same form?

This came out during McDonnell’s cross-examination, in which a prosecutor noted the discrepancy. McDonnell decided against including the vacation because he considered Goodwin a “personal friend,” from whom gifts did not have to be disclosed.

Under questioning, McDonnell said he included the other gift — a nearly $1,000 Cabinet retreat — because Virginia law requires gifts related to an elected official’s public position to be disclosed, even if it is from a personal friend. He said he considered the retreat linked to his official role. The vacation to the Kiawah Island resort in South Carolina, he said, was not.

Asbill then asked if Goodwin ever asked McDonnell for anything. Unlike businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., McDonnell immediately said that he had. Asbill then displayed a letter that Goodwin sent in March 2012, in which Goodwin asked the then-governor to reappoint his son-in-law, Robert Hardie, to the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia. That letter came two months before the free vacation.

McDonnell testified that he did not believe Hardie shared his vision for higher education reform and he declined, one of many times, he said, when he told a donor “no.”

But, under questioning from Asbill, he testified that he later went to Goodwin to ask for what Asbill termed “a huge personal favor.” He asked Goodwin to serve as an adviser to that same Board of Visitors, to help right the university after tensions over the near-firing of university president Teresa Sullivan. He said it took some persuading but he needed the help of the ex-board member and successful businessman.

(Not mentioned by either Asbill or McDonnell: While Goodwin joined the board as an informal adviser, McDonnell formally reappointed him to the panel in July 2013.)

Defense Attorney Henry “Hank” Asbill is now working backward through the issues that emerged at the end of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s cross-examination.

For instance, prosecutor Michael Dry had suggested that when McDonnell amended a loan application to the Pentagon Federal Credit Union on Feb. 18, 2013 to include loans from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. — three days after his wife was interviewed by state police — that meant he knew the loans needed to be disclosed.

“Did you overdisclose?” Asbill asked McDonnell on redirect. “Yes, I did,” McDonnell said, insisting that he had never disclosed corporate liabilities and only did so in that case to be particularly careful.

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has been turned back over to his defense attorneys, who will now attempt to shore up pieces of his testimony with redirect examination.

To that end, defense lawyer Henry “Hank” Asbill picked up with McDonnell right where Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry left off — that quote from scriptures that the then-governor had included in his 2010 inaugural speech: “to whom much is given, much is required.”

“Was anything required of you in exchange for what Mr. Williams gave to you and your family?” Asbill asked McDonnell.

“Absolutely not,” McDonnell responded.

Before his dramatic finish, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry wanted to demonstrate that even though Robert F. McDonnell listed loans from Williams’s trust to his real estate company and Star Scientific stock his wife had sold on various tax documents, that information was vague and could not be connected directly, immediately and publicly to the businessman.

Dry asked the governor, at one point, “Tax returns, you know they’re not publicly available, correct?”

The governor’s response: “Mine is now!”

It drew a laugh from the courtroom, one of the few moments of levity in an otherwise blistering cross-examination.

Bringing his cross-examination of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell to a close, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry flashed for jurors the text of the governor’s inaugural 2010 speech.

Toward the end, the governor quoted religious texts, saying, “The Scriptures say, to whom much is given, much will be required.”

“Mr. Williams gave you and and your family approximately $177,000 in gifts and loans, didn’t he?” Dry asked.

“Yes,” McDonnell responded tepidly.

The implication — if it isn’t obvious — is that the businessman’s largesse came with strings attached, and McDonnell knew it.

On direct examination, Robert F. McDonnell suggested that an e-mail he sent to his bookkeeper in early Feb. 2013, giving her access to the bank account of the partnership he co-owned with his sister, was a sign that he had nothing to hide. He made that move before the key law enforcement interview of his wife on Feb. 15, 2013.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry has tried to cast doubt on just how much transparency McDonnell’s actions would suggest. After all, Dry asked, wouldn’t access to the bank account merely allow the bookkeeper to see the image of a check made out to the partnership, called MoBo, from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s Starwood Trust? McDonnell agreed that was the case. It would not, Dry asked, have included reference to Williams by name? McDonnell again agreed.

Dry continued: It also would not have included any reference to meetings Williams received with government officials or a mansion event held for his company?

“That’s absolutely right,” McDonnell said, adding wryly, “I don’t think any of that is required for tax preparation.”

Dry then noted that in March 2013, after Maureen McDonnell had been interviewed about Williams by Virginia State Police, McDonnell for the first time e-mailed the bookkeeper and asked that she sign a confidentiality agreement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry is going over the financial disclosure form that then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell filed in early 2013 to cover 2012.

In the area of personal liabilities, Dry noted, the $50,000 loan Jonnie R. Williams Sr. made to the real estate partnership owned by the governor and his sister is not listed. Nor is the $20,000 wire transfer that Williams provided to the partnership.

“That’s correct because it says, ‘personal debts,’” McDonnell said.

McDonnell said that if the check and wire transfer had been made to him personally, rather than to MoBo, he would have disclosed them as loans to himself. Under state ethics law, corporate loans do not need to be disclosed.

Dry suggested that McDonnell had purposely evaded that reporting requirement. Jurors have seen evidence that Williams asked the then-governor whom he should make the check out to, and McDonnell had said MoBo.

But McDonnell said that was his response because the money was, in fact, for MoBo.

“It was always about MoBo,” he said. “That’s the proper creditor – excuse me – debtor.”

On the same form, Dry noted, McDonnell had not listed a string of gifts provided to McDonnell that year: two golf outings at Williams’s private country club, an expensive dinner at La Grotta in Richmond and repair work performed by Williams’s brother at the McDonnells’ suburban Richmond home.

McDonnell took issue with the characterization of the repair work as a gift because he’d planned to pay Donnie Williams “and the three contractors who’d worked with him.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry has just finished questioning Robert F. McDonnell about a February 2013 interview in which his wife was interrogated by state police. He has testified previously that he was upset about the interview — which McDonnell said was billed to him as an investigation into the former chef at the governor’s mansion. Ultimately, though, investigators asked his wife about Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and other subjects.

McDonnell responded to questions from Dry about the matter largely the same way he did to his own defense attorneys. He said his wife told him about the interview the night before, and he thought investigators were focused primarily on the chef, who was then thought to have stolen food from the mansion. He said he reviewed documents with his wife that night about his daughter’s wedding because he knew the chef “claimed that he was not fully paid for the wedding reception.”

Notably, McDonnell claims that is when he found out that his wife had pocketed a refund check from the wedding that he believed had gone to his daughter.

McDonnell told Dry: “I was disappointed, and I was angry,” after learning what investigators had actually asked about. He said he was upset, in particular, about the “representation” the head of state police had made to him in arranging the interview through his chief of staff.

Dry pressed the governor if he knew — at that point — that he personally might be under investigation.

“I wasn’t sure,” the former governor said. “There was one question about me.”

On a draft of his 2012 state-required economic disclosure form, then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell crossed off a $23,000 Kiawah Island vacation — paid for by Henrico hotelier William Goodwin Jr. — and wrote “personal” next to it.

The former Virginia governor has testified Goodwin, at that point, was a personal friend, and thus his gift did not need to be reported.

But on the same draft form, the governor did not cross off a $920 gift — listed as “cabinet retreat” — which also apparently came from Goodwin. The governor ultimately reported that gift on his final form, while leaving off the island vacation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry highlighted the inconsistency as he cross-examined McDonnell Tuesday, though he did not ask the governor to explain it.

Perhaps McDonnell’s own defense attorney will clear up the matter when given another opportunity to question his client.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry is attempting to cast doubt on former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s contention that he would have had no problem disclosing that his wife bought and held Star Scientific stock but said that she did so without telling him. That, he said, would have made disclosure difficult.

He has testified that at various times, he became upset with wife Maureen and exclaimed to her that she couldn’t hold stock without his knowing because that could result in inaccuracies on his annual disclosure forms. (In Virginia, elected officials must disclose any stock held by they or their immediate family members worth at least $10,000.)

“It’s your testimony that when you’re informing your wife about your reporting requirements, you’re NOT telling her, get this out of your name, because I’ll have to report it?” Dry asked McDonnell.

“No,” he said.

McDonnell has testified that his wife informed him shortly before Christmas 2012 that she had, unbeknownst to him, repurchased shares of Star Scientific stock but now planned to gift the shares to her children.

The couple’s stockbroker has testified that Maureen McDonnell told him that the transaction needed to be done before the end of the year so that the shares would not have to be disclosed. Daughter Cailin McDonnell testified that when Maureen McDonnell told her children at Christmas that she was giving them stock as a gift, she told them they needed to complete the forms before the end of the year for tax reasons.

Under questioning, McDonnell said he was present for that conversation, but he did not recall hearing his wife place any timeline on when the stock needed to be sold.

“To be clear,” Dry asked. “You’re testifying that you did not hear your wife say it had to be done before year’s end?”

“I did not,” McDonnell said.

“And that it had to be done for capital gains reasons?” Dry asked.

“I did not, no,” McDonnell said.

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has testified previously that he did not know — at least not until after the investigation was underway — that Jonnie R. Williams Sr. had given $10,000 to his daughter Jeanine and future son-in-law, Adam Zubowsky, as a present for the couple’s so-called “tool party.”

Regular readers of the McDonnell trial live blog know by now that a tool party is the male equivalent of a bridal shower.

McDonnell testified that he knew Williams wanted to give the couple a generator, but he assumed it was the garden variety type that can be purchased at Home Depot. He said he had no idea the businessman considered installing a much more expensive version but instead, cut a $10,000 check, when the logistics proved too difficult.

The testimony, so far, has not been disputed. Zubowsky and the governor’s daughter have not testified. But after Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry confirmed Tuesday that McDonnell had not talked with his son-in-law and daughter about the generator installation or check, he seemed to go on the attack. He asked whether it was plausible for the governor to believe Williams’s only present to the couple was a run-of-the-mill generator.

Dry asked: Wasn’t it true that Williams had given another McDonnell daughter, Cailin, $15,000 for the catering at her wedding, even though the businessman had met the young woman for only 15 minutes? And didn’t that gift come when the McDonnell family was just getting to know Williams?

McDonnell said that was true.

“Did you think that he wasn’t going to give a similar gift to” your other daughter? Dry asked.

The governor responded that the gift to Zubowsky and his daughter was for a tool party and was not a true wedding present.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry continued to hammer away at Robert F. McDonnell’s claim that anything Jonnie R. Williams Sr. provided to the former governor or his family was done out of friendship, not with the goal of securing state help for the executive’s company, Star Scientific.

Dry showed the jury a text they have seen many times before. Williams sent it to the governor on July 3, 2012. In it, Williams mixes talk of a clinical trial being conducted on Star’s nutritional supplement with an offer to provide the governor with “cash” and to treat him to a lavish golf and sailing weekend on Cape Cod.

“If u need cash let me know,” Williams wrote. “Let’s go golfing and sailing [at] Chatham Bars Inn … Labor Day weekend if you can.”

McDonnell had publicly reported that trip on his financial disclosure form, but Dry suggested that was only because the director of the governor’s political action committee, Phil Cox, also attended. Earlier in the trial, Cox had testified that he’d asked right up front how the trip would be reported.

Dry also asked McDonnell if he had been aware that on that very same weekend that Williams was entertaining him and the first lady in grand style on Cape Cod, his daughter Rachel and a friend were enjoying a Florida vacation courtesy of the Star chief.

McDonnell acknowledged that Rachel and her friend would be staying at one of Williams’s properties in Florida. As for the fact that Williams bought Rachel’s commercial plane ticket to Florida, the governor said, “I don’t think I knew that.”

McDonnell said he was also  in the dark about the white Range Rover that Williams allowed Rachel to drive in Florida. But he did say that he was aware that Rachel had gone sailing and figured Williams had picked up the tab for that.

“I assumed that was the case, yes,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry is continuing his efforts to try and establish for jurors that businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. was giving loans to former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell personally, even if the checks were made out to a corporate entity McDonnell co-owned with his sister.

This is an important point to prove since McDonnell is charged with failing to disclose Williams’s loans on bank documents.

Dry just pointed to a text message exchange between McDonnell and Williams in May 2012, in which the governor asked Williams to extend $20,000 more, in addition to the $50,000 he had given two months earlier.

Williams responded to McDonnell’s text: “Done. Tell me who to make the check out to.”

Dry noted to McDonnell that Williams didn’t assume he should write his check to MoBo. He asked, to whom should the check be made out to.

“At that point, you don’t understand that Mr. Williams didn’t care if it was made out to MoBo, that it was a loan to you?” Dry said sarcastically.

“I can’t tell you what was in his mind,” McDonnell responded.

Robert F. McDonnell has testified throughout the trial that he did not share personal financial information with his staff, and he offered that as an explanation for why they did not know about his loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

Under aggressive questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry, he did not deviate from that account.

“I have 110,000 who work in state government. None of them know about that,” he said, specifically asked about a $20,000 loan Williams had given to his real estate company.

Dry has questioned the governor throughout the day about his dealings with Williams and how others were unaware of the complete details. He honed in on the issue just before lunch Tuesday.

“You’re telling this jury, you decided not to inform any of your senior staff about the loans with Mr. Williams because that was personal financial information, instead of being worried that they would start asking questions?” Dry asked.

McDonnell said the question was several in one.

“First of all, I’m telling the truth about my loans with Mr. Williams,” he said.

The two sparred back and forth for a while, and eventually, Dry sighed loudly and said, “Let’s go on.” McDonnell’s defense attorney objected, suggesting the prosecutor had not asked a question.

“You have a question. You didn’t have an answer, so he said let’s go on,” U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer said, appearing to take the prosecutor’s side. “Come on, everybody. Let’s tighten this up.”

Robert F. McDonnell has been charged with bank fraud for omitting loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. on a 2012 personal financial statement submitted to a bank for a loan renewal.

Prosecutors allege McDonnell, then Virginia’s governor, left out reference to Williams to influence the bank and hide a corrupt relationship with the businessman.

McDonnell has countered, saying that he read the bank form and concluded the loans did not have to be disclosed: They were corporate loans extended to MoBo Real Estate Partners, a partnership between him and his sister. Since there were no documents signed memorializing the loans, McDonnell says he never took personal liability for them, which is the only reason they would need to be included on a personal financial statement.

“The forms were clear to me about what was required,” McDonnell testified Tuesday.

But, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry pointed out, McDonnell also omitted another loan on that same personal financial statement. This one was from Paul Davis and was also made out to MoBo. However in this instance, McDonnell did sign a document that made him personally liable for the loan.

Dry was pointing to an inconsistency: If McDonnell actually reasoned out at the time that he didn’t have to disclose Williams’s loan because he held no personal liability for it, wouldn’t he have come to the same conclusion about the Davis loan?

Isn’t it true, Dry insisted, that the reason why there is no requirement to disclose Williams’ loan is because there was no personal guarantee. Is that “an after-the-fact legal justification that you’ve come up with here?”

“Absolutely not,” McDonnell said.

“Isn’t it true that you knew the MoBo loan for 2012 from Mr. Williams was really a loan to you?” Dry said.

“Mr. Dry, that is absolutely untrue,” McDonnell said. “It was a loan to MoBo. That’s what we negotiated.”

Six days after a $50,000 check from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. was deposited into the account of the real estate company co-owned by Robert F. McDonnell, the governor used Williams’s private plane to fly back from a trip to Florida, McDonnell acknowledged Tuesday.

Three days after that, he pulled out a bottle of Anatabloc during a meeting with state staffers to discuss the health-care plan for Virginia employees, he said.

McDonnell acknowledged the timing of his meeting might suggest a connection between the things Williams gave the governor and the acts the governor took for Williams — in response to questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry.

And he made a fairly important concession about the March 21, 2012, meeting in which he pulled out the bottle, saying it was possible he asked his staffers to meet with someone from Star Scientific about the product.

“It could’ve,” he said of whether that happened. “I don’t have a clear memory of that.”

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has insisted throughout the trial that he was comfortable losing $40,000 to $60,000 every year on two rental properties in Virginia Beach that he co-owned with his sister.

On Tuesday, prosecutors pointed out — with assistance from Fox News show host Sean Hannity — that his admission does not jibe with his previous political positions.

After grilling McDonnell for several minutes on the finances of the rental properties, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry played a clip of the governor appearing on the cable show on Aug. 6, 2012. Hannity praises the governor for fiscal responsibility and asks how he did it.

“You can’t spend more than you have for any period of time, you go broke,” McDonnell said.

As jurors mulled what they had seen, Dry followed up: “Despite spending more money than you had coming in, it was your business plan to rely on loans from Mr. Williams, is that true?”

“No,” the governor responded. He acknowledged he did want to rely on other people.

On March 11, 2012, Robert F. McDonnell was alerted by his sister that a check had arrived to pay bills for the real estate company owned by the two of them. McDonnell testified that at some point that day, he learned the check was from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., which he said he was puzzling because he thought the terms of the loan were still being negotiated.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry has just highlighted some additional oddities in McDonnell’s interactions with Williams on the issue, focusing on an e-mail exchange between McDonnell and his then-brother-in-law, Michael Uncapher, the next day on March 12. In those messagers, Uncapher informed McDonnell he had cashed Williams’s check. McDonnell responded that Uncapher should make a March payment that was due on mortgages for the beach properties he owned but hold off on paying other bills.

That night, McDonnell said he spoke to Williams to hammer out the terms of the loan, which by now, was already in the bank.

McDonnell said he took notes as Williams spoke, summarizing various deals the businessman proposed. One such deal was that Williams would rent the beach properties the governor and his sister owned, for use by his company. In that arrangement, the $50,000 check would be considered an advance payment for renting the properties.

“You didn’t understand that he was saying the $50,000 would be used as rent to hide the fact that he was giving you loans?” Dry asked.

“Absolutely not,” McDonnell said.

“Had he ever stayed at your beach properties before?” Dry asked. “No,” McDonnell said.

Had he ever expressed interest in staying at them? Dry continued. “No,” McDonnell said.

“Had he even seen your beach properties before,” Dry pressed. “No, I don’t think so,” McDonnell said.

“That was his proposal,” McDonnell said. “It was not the final agreement.”

Elsewhere in the notes, McDonnell wrote: “In two years, he will loan me $ to buy the shares (50k shares).”

McDonnell described that as another possible proposal from Williams that never came to pass.

“That didn’t strike you as odd, that he’s offering to loan you money to buy shares he’s lending you?” Dry asked.

The two went around and around on that idea, with McDonnell insisting he didn’t understand the proposal but that Williams certainly wasn’t offering to loan him money to buy shares he was also lending him. (An arrangement that would not be a true loan, since it would not be repaid.)

“At what point do you say, ‘Hey, I already deposited the check?'” Dry said, adding that it was strange that the two would have a complicated conversation about a stock loan when Williams’s check was already in the bank.

“I didn’t deposit the check,” McDonnell replied wanly, referring to the technical fact that he had, in fact, been informed of the deposit by Uncapher.

The former governor insisted that he did tell Williams about the deposit at some point, likely at the start of the call. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was listening to him. We already agreed it was 2 percent, 3 years.”

McDonnell was referring to the final terms of the loan, in which McDonnell would return the money in three years, with 2 percent interest.

On the witness stand Monday, former governor Robert F. McDonnell seemed to suggest his director of communications Tucker Martin made an error in responding to a Washington Post inquiry in May 2013 about the then-governor’s use of businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s Ferrari.

During his cross-examination on Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry asked McDonnell why he allowed Martin to respond to a Post question on the car ride by saying he was just doing Williams a favor.

McDonnell shot back: “I don’t believe those were my words. … He may have construed that as a favor. I know we were asked to bring that car back.”

That seemed odd to us, since our recollection is that all statements for Post stories about McDonnell and Williams were provided in writing, presumably carefully reviewed by the governor and his lawyers before release.

So we decided to look a bit more closely at the issue.

The back story:

Williams has testified that he had the Ferrari driven to his Smith Mountain Lake house at first lady Maureen McDonnell’s request, specifically so her husband could drive the car while the family vacationed there in July 2011. Documents support that. Other testimony has indicated that McDonnell drove the car to brunch during the trip and then drove it back to Richmond when the trip ended. Many photographs exist of him behind the wheel, smiling, seemingly enjoying himself.

But McDonnell has testified that he didn’t know why the car was at the house, did not know his wife had requested its presence and drove the car back to Richmond because he believed it was a request from Williams. “What I understood was it was a car that needed to be returned and driven back for his daughter, is what I was told,” he said on the stand.

So we looked back at the written statement provided for that story. Here was what Martin released in May 2013:

“During the 2011 trip it is our understanding that the family did help Mr. Williams take one car to his lake house and return another to Richmond. There was no recreational use of vehicles. The family was simply helping Mr. Williams get one car to his Smith Mountain Lake house and return another to Richmond.”

So, McDonnell is correct in this sense: “Favor,” indeed, was not his word. It was a Washington Post paraphrase taken from the statement, released by McDonnell, that he was “simply helping” Williams get the Ferrari back to Richmond.

The issue is hardly critical. But it does highlight McDonnell’s tendency, seen repeatedly on the stand Monday, to carefully parse his words. Would a juror care whether he used the word “favor” or not? Or would they be more likely to focus on whether it was accurate to tell the public that “there was no recreational use of vehicles,” when they have been shown picture after picture of McDonnell grinning as he drove the expensive sports car?

Robert F. McDonnell acknowledged Tuesday that he recognized some names on the guest list of a Feb. 29, 2012, reception for health-care leaders at the governor’s mansion — namely, Jonnie R. Williams Sr.; Williams’s son, Jonnie Williams Jr.; and Paul Ladenson, a doctor associated with Williams’s company, Star Scientific.

McDonnell also acknowledged he introduced Ladenson to the crowd gathered at the event, although he could not remember if he did so at his wife’s request or merely because the doctor was was an out-of-towner from Johns Hopkins University.

“I probably would have done it anyway,” McDonnell said. “Dr. Ladenson is from a distinguished hospital out of town.”

The names — and the way McDonnell treated Ladenson — are important because all three were added to the guest list at Jonnie Williams Sr.’s request, and to the dismay of the state health secretary. Prosecutors are using the event as a key piece of evidence that the businessman was afforded special treatment by the governor in exchange for loans, vacations and luxury goods.

And on Tuesday, prosecutors presented another damaging piece of evidence connected with the event: the names of those people who wanted to attend but were turned away. They showed jurors of list of people the Republican Governors Association wanted to invite, including representatives from WellMed Medical Group, which around that time had given $1.25 million to the association, and Pfizer, which had given $930,000.

Despite the fact that McDonnell was picked to chair the association in mid-2011 — and raised tens of millions of dollars for it — the RGA’s guest requests were denied. Jurors know that Williams was allowed to add about 25 of his company’s employees and associates to the list.

McDonnell said he did not know, as the event was being planned, that the association donors wanted to come.

On Feb. 29, 2012, Robert F. McDonnell and Jonnie R. Williams Sr. met to discuss what would ultimately become a low-interest $50,000 loan. At the questioning of Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry, though, the former governor was forced to acknowledge the financial transaction — at one time — could have been even more favorable for him.

McDonnell acknowledged at Dry’s questioning that he and Williams actually first discussed the loan as a stock transaction: Williams would essentially lend shares of stock that the governor could use as collateral in securing a cash loan. And the repayment options, as pondered in the governor’s own notes, seem especially generous. McDonnell would either simply return the shares or purchase them at $2.20 each, despite the fact that they were then trading a $3.75 a share.

“Regardless, if the stock went up to $10, you’re protected, because you only have to pay him $2.20?” Dry asked.

“That’s the proposal that he made, that I wrote down, yes, sir,” McDonnell said.

The meeting happened, notably, on the same day as a health-care leaders reception at the governor’s mansion. Jurors know that Williams was allowed to shape the guest list at the event, to the dismay of the state’s health secretary.

Robert F. McDonnell has long sought to posit his testimony as contradicting that of Jonnie R. Williams Sr., hoping jurors will believe him over the wheeling-and-dealing dietary supplement salesman.

But in cross-examining the former governor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry highlighted another person whose account seems to differ from McDonnell’s.

The governor’s own stock broker and longtime family friend.

Dry said the broker, John Piscitelli, had testified earlier in the trial that McDonnell told him in a February 2012 conference call that Star Scientific, Williams’s company, was holding stock for him. McDonnell disputed having said that, saying the intent of the call with his broker was to discuss a possible “margin loan” from Williams to the governor’s real estate company.

“No sir,” McDonnell told the prosecutor, of whether he had told Piscitelli that Star Scientific was holding stock for him. “I did not. That was a miscommunication.”

The broker, Piscitelli, also testified earlier in the trial that the governor and his wife asked on the same call about opening a stock account in Maureen McDonnell’s name only, and having that account stand totally segregated. At Dry’s questioning, McDonnell said he recalled the testimony, but he saw their discussions as far more tentative.

The questioning seems designed to both highlight instances where McDonnell’s testimony differs from others, and also to raise questions about when he learned about his wife’s buying and selling of Star Scientific stock, and whether that was done to hide the transactions. The former governor has testified that in February 2012, he believed his wife had sold Star stock she bought the previous year. Dry probed aggressively on why, then, it would be necessary to open segregated brokerage account in his wife’s name for some new stock from Williams.

McDonnell ultimately held his own, insisting he did not know that his wife was holding Star stock at that moment in time, and that he asked about a segregated account only because Williams’s loan — in whatever form it would take — was intended for his real estate company.

Now, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry has hit Robert F. McDonnell with perhaps the most potentially damaging fact of the whole case: The six-minute e-mail.

Just before midnight on Feb. 16, 2012, McDonnell wrote an e-mail to businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. about a loan. Six minutes later, just after midnight, McDonnell wrote an e-mail to top aide Jasen Eige asking him to “pls see me” about “Anatabloc issues” UVa. and VCU. That’s the product made by Williams’s company that the businessman wanted studied at public universities.

“This is one of five e-mails I sent that night,” McDonnell said.

“Right,” Dry said with sarcasm.

“At this point, you know that Mr. Williams wants your assistance in getting UVa. and VCU” to study the product?

McDonnell insisted that was not correct. But Dry pointed out Williams sent a letter in June 2011 outlining his desired studies.

“You don’t understand that he is trying to get this studied and he wants your help?”

“That’s not what the June 16 letter said,” McDonnell insisted, describing as a proposal similar to hundreds of others he received. “He never asked me for help with UVa and VCU.”

Dry noted that McDonnell also said on Monday that he had posed with products for companies “hundreds of times.”

How many of those hundreds of proposals or pictures were affiliated with businessmen with whom he was negotiating a $50,000 loan?

“None,” McDonnell conceded.

“Any of them affiliated with people who gave $20,000 to MoBo?” Dry asked, referring to a later loan Williams had provided . “None,” McDonnell said.

Or provided thousands of dollars in golf? “None,” he said.

“So, you didn’t see Mr. Williams as unique?” Dry said, his voice reaching a new level of incredulity.

“Mr. Dry, if you’re suggesting that I got a $50,000 loan for MoBo in order to get Mr. Williams’s calls returned, you’re completely mistaken,” McDonnell said, his voice also rising.

Then Dry noted that Eige served as legal counsel to the governor, but McDonnell never told him about the personal financial discussions with the businessman. Didn’t McDonnell think the loan negotiations would be relevant to Eige during a conversation about studies Williams wanted at public universities?

“To ask him to get a phone call returned, which I had done thousands of times? It’s basic constituent service,” McDonnell said. “No sir.”

Prosecutor Michael S. Dry, left, and Virginia State Police Special Agent Charles Hagan, right, walk to the federal courthouse in Richmond earlier this month. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

Again, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry pointed to an email where Robert F. McDonnell misspelled businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s first name, as he took notes about negotiations with the executive for a $50,000 loan.

McDonnell has maintained he believed Williams was giving the money because he was a friend, not because he expected anything in return.

“So, he’s not a personal friend at this point, right?” Dry asked.

“He’s a friend at this point,” McDonnell maintained.

“Let me ask you about that,” Dry said. “Is it typical that with your friends, you misspell their names? Is this typical for you?”

“I misspelled his name. I did it repeatedly,” McDonnell said, his voice rising with anger. “It’s not like me, but I’ve done it before.”

“But he’s a personal friend,” Dry said sarcastically.

“He is a friend, yes sir,” McDonnell said.

Robert F. McDonnell’s jaw is getting tighter and anger is creeping into his voice, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry continues to hammer him with the odd timing of e-mails discussing possible studies of businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr.’s dietary supplement at public universities, which landed in the same few days the governor was negotiating a $50,000 loan from Williams.

McDonnell has acknowledged that he saw an e-mail his wife, Maureen, sent to him and top aide Jasen Eige on Feb. 9, 2012, in which she wrote that Williams was having trouble getting his calls returned from the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Dry pointed out through that that evening, the couple traveled to the District of Columbia together to attend a Mitt Romney event, stayed a night at a hotel, and then the next morning spent more than 30 minutes in an SUV together driving to another event. McDonnell acknowledged previous testimony that they were, in fact, sitting next to each other in the vehicle.

During the time they rode together, Maureen McDonnell sent an e-mail to Eige in which she asked him to call Williams. “Gov wants to get this going w/VCU and UVa,” she wrote, adding “please see us when we return” to discuss further.

McDonnell insisted he did not see the e-mail and never told his wife he wanted to get the studies going. In fact, he maintained that the two never discussed Star Scientific or Anatabloc at all on the trip to Washington.

“Is it your testimony that your wife is misleading Mr. Eige?” Dry asked.

“I don’t know,” McDonnell insisted.

“Your testimony is that she would send this to Mr. Eige assuming that the two of you would not discuss it?” Dry persisted.

“I don’t know,” McDonnell said tightly. “I didn’t get the e-mail.”

“Is it your testimony that your wife is e-mailing Mr. Eige about this as she’s sitting next to you?” Dry persisted.

“My testimony is that I didn’t know the e-mail is being sent,” McDonnell replied.

After grilling Robert F. McDonnell about his Feb. 3, 2012 call to negotiate a loan from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry turned his attention to an e-mail exchange that took place, as he stressed to jurors, five days later.

This is a key point for prosecutors because McDonnell is trying to refute allegations that he and his wife were conspiring to assist Williams. The former governor is also attempting to quash the assertion that Williams had been clear about what he wanted from the McDonnell and the governor was well aware of the expectations.

The e-mail, sent by McDonnell’s wife, Maureen, to both the governor and top aide Jasen Eige, read: “Here’s the info from Jonnie,” she wrote. “He has calls in to VCU and UVA and no one will return his calls.” Again, Dry stressed that the first lady’s e-mail came right in the middle of the negotiations over a $50,000 loan.

Maureen McDonnell’s e-mail came with two attachments. One was a list of doctors whom Williams was trying to persuade to study his new dietary supplement. The other was a list of talking points that Williams’s company had used during a call with University of Virginia officials, including one indicating that it was the governor himself who recommended the company submit a grant application to Virginia’s tobacco commission.

Dry peppered McDonnell with questions about the exchange. When his wife wrote, “Here’s the info from Jonnie,” didn’t she mean that the two of them had previously discussed the issue? “I don’t remember a prior conversation,” McDonnell insisted.

What about after the e-mail landed? Did they discuss it afterward? McDonnell insisted they had not, even though, as Dry pointed out, shortly after it landed he and his wife traveled together to Washington, D.C. and stayed that night at a hotel.

What’s more, McDonnell maintained that while he read Maureen McDonnell’s e-mail, he failed to read the attachments to the note.

“I don’t recall seeing it,” he said. “If I did see it, I would have been upset with the lies in that. I did not suggest a grant to the tobacco commission.”

Dry again pushed sarcastically: It’s McDonnell’s testimony that he saw the email but not its attachments? Just five days after he spoke to Williams about a $50,000 loan?

“I don’t remember seeing this in real time, is my testimony,” McDonnell said. “I didn’t see it.”

“So before, you testified that you could not recall whether you saw that attachment? Now, your testimony is that you’re certain you didn’t see it?” Dry asked.

“Yes,” McDonnell replied.

Robert F. McDonnell has acknowledged he and Jonnie R. Williams Sr. talked on the phone in early February 2012 about what would ultimately become a $50,000 loan to the then-governor’s real estate company, MoBo Real Estate Partners, from the businessman’s trust. Jurors have also seen the notes McDonnell took during the discussion about various stock and financial transactions.

As he began his cross examination of the former governor Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry examined the notes in painstaking detail to try to show that Williams offered McDonnell a sweetheart deal, and that both men contemplated keeping their arrangement secret — something Williams has said they did, but McDonnell has denied.

Highlighting various portions of the handwritten text, Dry showed the governor that at one time, Williams was thinking about loaning the then-governor 50,000 shares of Star Scientific stock, valued at $3.15 a share. Did McDonnell understand, Dry asked, that deal — which would have been worth $150,000 — was on the table?

“These were his proposals,” McDonnell responded. “There were notes from three years ago. I didn’t have a good understanding.”

Dry then asked about another note, in which the governor wrote about returning the 50,000 shares at “$1.90 (what Johnny paid for them).”

“Did you not understand,” Dry asked, “that he’s offering to loan you $150,000 worth of stock but only make you repay $90,000?”

“It really wasn’t clear to me,” McDonnell responded.

Dry questioned the governor aggressively — making his incredulity obvious — about a passage in which the governor had written “loan from Starwood Aviation to Maureen or MoBo” and circled “MoBo.” The prosecutor noted the circle was made with a different pen than was used to scribble the rest of the notes. Was it really true that McDonnell had made the circle — as he claimed — before the investigation started and because he always intended the loan to be made to his real estate company?

McDonnell held his ground.

“I did it when I put them in the file,” he said.

The prosecutor then took aim at a different section, which McDonnell had titled “Reportability.” The former governor has testified previously that he made notes in that section based on what Williams told him were his own disclosure requirements with the SEC. McDonnell has said he would have disclosed the transaction as required on his statement of economic interest, if that became necessary, and he denied ever speaking with Williams about the possibility of keeping their deal secret.

Dry seemed skeptical.

“That didn’t strike you as an odd thing to say in this conversation?” the prosecutor asked McDonnell about Williams and his own disclosure.

He continued: “Why would you care what his disclosure requirements were?”

“I didn’t,” McDonnell said flatly.

“Ok, he’s just offering this up?” Dry asked.

“Yes!” McDonnell said, his voice rising.

Finally, Dry pressed the governor about a passage in the notes indicating the transaction would need to be reviewed by lawyers. How would lawyers know, Dry asked, that the governor had helped Williams get a meeting with a state health official, or hosted a lunch for him at the mansion timed to coincide with the launch of his company’s supplement?

The governor acknowledged lawyers would only know about the event and the meeting if he or Williams volunteered that information.

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

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry has renewed his cross-examination on Tuesday without so much as a “good morning” to former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell.

His first topic for the day: The events leading up to a $50,000 loan made out to MoBo Real Estate Partners by businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in the winter of 2012. That’s the company the governor owned with his sister.

Dry showed McDonnell an e-mail exchange he had with his wife and brother in-law in January 2012 in which there was the first conversation indicating that Maureen McDonnell was having discussions about money with Williams. In the e-mail, McDonnell asked who his wife was talking to about “helping us.”

“You’re not talking about MoBo, right?” Dry asked him. “You’re talking about you, your wife and your sister?”

“No,” McDonnell said.

“When you say ‘we,’ you mean MoBo?” Dry asked, incredulity creeping into his voice.

“Yes,” McDonnell said.

Dry is attempting to establish that while Williams made his check out to MoBo, the money was actually a loan to the former governor himself — a fact he must establish to win conviction on the bank fraud charges pending against the McDonnells.

Then Dry pointed out something else notable in the email exchange: McDonnell referred to Williams as “Johnnie.” In fact, the correct spelling of the businessman’s first name is “Jonnie.” Throughout 2012, the governor repeated that misspelling — even in a text message in which McDonnell requested $20,000 from the businessman.

“You’re aware today that that is not the correct spelling of Mr. Williams’s name?” Dry asked.

“Yes, I am,” McDonnell replied.

So, Dry asked, at that time, as he prepared to seek a $50,000 loan from the man, did McDonnell consider him a personal friend?

“It felt like we were becoming better friends,” McDonnell said.

“Not becoming,” Dry said. “Is it your testimony that at that time, Mr. Williams was a personal friend of yours?”

“He’s a friend,” McDonnell answered.

Day 22 of the McDonnell trial opens with more vigorous cross-examination of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell. And there seems to be a lot more left.

At the end of Monday’s proceedings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry told the judge his next subject would take 15 minutes and asked if he should proceed. The judge asked, “Are you anywhere near finished?”

“No, sir,” Dry responded.

In approaching 18 hours on the stand — 4 1/2 hours on cross-examination alone — McDonnell has run the emotional gamut, speaking confidently and purposefully at times, his voice nearing a whisper at others. He has given detailed accounts of various events, but he has claimed to have little to no recollection just as often. He has acknowledged receiving many gifts from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. but denied repeatedly he gave the former dietary supplement company executive any consideration that he would not have extended to any businessperson in Virginia. He has pulled back the curtain on what he says was his own failing marriage.

When Dry is done questioning McDonnell, the former governor’s own defense attorney will have a chance to question his client again and perhaps undo any damage that the prosecutor inflicted. It remains to be seen when that moment will come.

The proceedings get underway at 9:45 a.m.

On Monday, Robert F. McDonnell faced hours of aggressive questioning at his corruption trial as a federal prosecutor sought to expose contradictions and inconsistencies in his account of his interactions with a wealthy Richmond businessman.

It was the fourth day that McDonnell occupied the witness stand in his own defense but the first in which he went head to head with his chief antagonist: Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry, who has led the investigation of McDonnell and his wife for more than 16 months.

Read the full story here or see yesterday’s trial liveblog.