Gov. Abigail Spanberger is taking the closest thing to the high road that she can take with respect to the news that her political nemesis, Louise Lucas, has been charged in a multi-count racketeering indictment by the Trump DOJ.
“I have read the charging document alleging a series of criminal acts by a member of the Virginia Senate. In our American system of justice, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and that is true for Senator L. Louise Lucas. She and her family deserve the opportunity to present their defense and speak to the allegations presented,” the governor said, per a statement issued on her behalf by the governor’s office on Thursday.
A Justice Department release announcing the charges against Lucas, the chair of the powerful Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, laid out the details of a “racketeering conspiracy involving marijuana distribution, money laundering, honest services fraud through bribery, maintaining drug-involved premises, possession of firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking, and wire fraud.”
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Lucas and Spanberger are both Democrats, but they are nowhere near to being allies.
Lucas, notably, started using the nickname “Data Center Diva” for Spanberger as the two tussled over the future of tax breaks for data centers during the budget impasse this past spring.
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She also labeled House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott “Amazon Don” as the impasse was playing out.
Scott, in a statement issued by his office today, took a similar standoffish approach to the Lucas news of the day.
“Senator Lucas has spent decades serving the people of Portsmouth and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and she is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence,” Scott said. “The Trump administration’s weaponization of the justice system is deeply troubling — as are the allegations made in this indictment. Today we have heard only from the Trump administration, and Senator Lucas will have her chance to respond to these charges in court.”
The 82-year-old great-grandmother also took aim at U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner earlier this year over congressional redistricting, advising her fellow Democrats, who had expressed misgivings about the push to redraw the state’s political maps ahead of the midterms, that “we do not need ‘coaching’ on redistricting coming from a cuck chair in the corner.”
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Neither of the senators have offered comment today on the news of the indictments against Lucas.
But as Don Scott did, so did Abigail Spanberger, even though you know neither of them wanted to.
You might notice: neither the speaker, nor the governor, exactly came out and screamed “injustice!”
“The timing of this indictment undermines the U.S. Department of Justice’s previously longstanding policy of not taking legal actions — to include indictments or significant investigative steps — close to an election, and sadly, this timing further erodes the trust the American people deserve to have in the Department of Justice,” Spanberger concluded her statement on the matter.
You can almost hear the faint echoes of scolding for Lucas letting herself get indicted there in the governor’s words.
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Chris Graham
