DPVA Cares: Helping Cuccinelli Remember Star Scientific Gifts

From the Democratic Party of Virginia: Ken Cuccinelli is a busy man. Running for Governor full-time, being Attorney General part-time and injecting his personal agenda into places that have nothing to do with his job don’t leave much time in the day for anything else.

To hear him tell it, with a schedule that packed it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he simply forgot nearly $13,000 in gifts from Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams and other interests when the time came to fill out his legally required financial disclosure statements.  That’s why, as a helpful service to Ken Cuccinelli, the Democratic Party of Virginia put together a list of the moments when, were he not so distracted by the pressing demands of life as an ideological crusader, Ken Cuccinelli might have felt the memory of his Star Scientific-funded vacations trying to get into the front of his mind.

Hopefully after considering this list, Cuccinelli will be able to train his brain to remember the gifts he receives from companies that have lawsuits before his office, before he has to go to the trouble of admitting that he broke Virginia law yet again by failing to disclose them.

Ken Cuccinelli could have remembered the thousands in Star Scientific gifts he failed to disclose:

• When he filed his Statement of Economic Interest, supposedly informing Virginians who gave him gifts for the previous year.
• When he bought Star Scientific stock just before the company sued the Commonwealth over unpaid taxes.
• While looking back through photo slides of all the fun he had at Jonnie Williams’ Smith Mountain Lake House on Thanksgiving 2010.
• When he filed yet another Statement of Economic Interest, once again supposedly giving Virginians a window into the gifts he received that year.
• When Star Scientific filed suit against Virginia over unpaid taxes and Cuccinelli’s office took the case, even though Cuccinelli owned stock in the company.
• When he bought more Star Scientific stock even as he was representing taxpayers in a case against the company which, coincidentally, was going nowhere.
• When he sold his first issue of Star Scientific stock at the highest share price the stock reached all of 2012.
• When he thought back to the day he got a little too much sun at the lake house Jonnie Williams let him use for free for Summer vacation in 2012.
• While enjoying his daily dose of Anatabloc from the $6,700 stash of it Jonnie Williams gave him that he somehow forgot to disclose to Virginians.
• When he got caught sitting on the Star Scientific case despite his personal financial stake in the company and had to recuse himself under public pressure.
• When Governor Bob McDonnell became embroiled in controversy over gifts that Jonnie Williams gave him over the past several years.

Despite this long list of opportunities to remember the thousands of dollars in gifts that Jonnie Williams and others gave him, Ken Cuccinelli just couldn’t quite recall them when Virginia law required him to disclose them to taxpayers. Hopefully, after examining this helpful list, he won’t be so forgetful the next time companies in which he has a personal and financial stake gift him gifts even as Virginians are trusting him to pursue a lawsuit against them.