Another memory lapse revealed by Cuccinelli on Friday, gift total from Star Scientific doubles

Would you forget if a friend or donor paid for a charter flight to carry you off to a speaking engagement not more than 3 years ago? If so, you and Ken Cuccinelli have something in common, only the latter has to legally report these ‘gifts’.

In failing to report this, and a number of other so-called gifts, Cuccinelli has raised the bar of suspicion around himself and beleaguered Star Scientific CEO, Jonnie Williams Sr.

Cuccinelli is under fire due to a lawsuit that dietary supplement manufacturer, Star Scientific, brought against the state of Virginia. So far so good, right? The only problem for Cuccinelli is that he is and was the state’s top attorney who would be defending the state against a company he owned stock in.  

According to Cuccinelli on Friday, a total of three trips and two vacations over the past 5 years were “inadvertent omissions” that were revised in his disclosure statements when they were ‘rediscovered’. Even without these new “omissions,” Cuccinelli’s original financial disclosures showed that Williams’ had given Cuccinelli $13,000 worth of gifts and travel. That figure is double now.

Here’s a list of Cuccinelli’s forgotten bro-mance gifts:

– A $628 trip from Jonnie Williams to and from New York City for a Jewish community center meeting in 2009

– A $7,751 charter flight from Alpha Natural Resources in 2010 to take Cuccinelli and his parents to a Virginia Mining Association meeting in Southwest Virginia. Cuccinelli was a speaker at that meeting, which he described as the association’s annual mine land reclamation awards.

– A 2010 Thanksgiving stay at Jonnie Williams’ Smith Mountain Lake lakehouse for Cuccinelli and his family, plus dinner that Williams had delivered. Valued at $1,500.

– In 2012, transportation to and from a rally by the Federation of American Coal, Energy and Security, valued at $795.

– In 2012, the Cuccinelli family also spent most of a week at Williams’ lake house for a summer family vacation, valued at $3,000

– In 2011, Cuccinelli revised his report to show that a $6,711 box of food supplements came from Star Scientific, not from Williams.

Whoops!

Regardless of Cuccinelli’s explanation/excuse, Cuccinelli either lied to the people of Virginia or his competency is in question, or both. Either Cuccinelli knowingly failed to reveal these ‘gifts’ in his original financial disclosure statements or his ‘lapse’ in memory is a severely concerning factor for an individual running for Virginia’s highest executive office position.