Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will begin lecturing at Regent University, a private Christian university in Virginia Beach, and is working at the law firm of Poole, Brooke and Plumlee.
In 2014, a jury convicted McDonnell of 11 counts of public corruption. At the trial, the Justice Department alleged McDonnell and his wife took over $177,000 in gifts and loans from Star Scientific executive, Jonnie R. Williams, Sr., in exchange for promoting a dietary product called Anatabloc.
The U.S. Supreme Court, however, overturned the charges in June 2016 when the Court took issue with the prosecution’s “boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”
In an interview with The Cavalier Daily Tuesday, McDonnell said his current primary job is at a consulting company called the McDonnell Group, which he started with his sister Maureen McDonnell in October 2015. The company works on business development, consulting and investor recruitment for start-up companies.
McDonnell rejoined the Virginia Beach law firm of Poole, Brooke and Plumlee in January.
McDonnell was a partner at Poole, Brooke and Plumlee for 14 years before running for office.
“I’m doing a little bit of practice, but primarily doing some work to help build their business and help them bring in new clients,” McDonnell said.
McDonnell also joined the faculty at Regent University as a distinguished professor in January. He earned his law degree at Regent University and will be a guest lecturer for a two-week period beginning in March, teaching a course on constitutional criminal procedure in Regent’s School of Law, and an undergraduate leadership course in Regent’s College of Arts & Sciences.
Mindy Hughes, director of public relations for Regent, said the school anticipates McDonnell may also teach in Regent’s school of government in the fall 2017 semester.
In addition to teaching McDonnell is working on establishing on organization at Regent that he said will likely be called the Governor’s Center for the Restoration of Federalism. The center aims to find solutions on how to give more power back to state and local governments.
“The whole idea will be to examine some of the problems at the federal level of government today, and evaluate the current system with regard to the founders’ view of the state-federal balance of power and try to create a working blueprint to devolve more power to the state and local governments,” McDonnell said.
McDonnell also said he wants to work on creating a center relating to political civility. He said he believes civil discourse can be improved in the U.S.
“We just have to learn how to talk to each other better, how to problem solve, how to be civil, how to just have some basic manners and how to cooperate,” McDonnell said. “The last 10 to 15 years, it seems to me, we’ve had a real degradation of the nature of how we work through problems at the national level, and I’d like to be part of the conversation on how to fix that.”
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