McDonnell and his wife are the target of 13 of the 14 charges. McDonnell and wife indicted

Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell were indicted in federal court Tuesday on 14 counts of fraud, conspiracy and obstructing federal investigators, all stemming from a gift-giving scandal that clouded the governor’s final months in office.

McDonnell and his wife, who have acknowledged taking financial and material gifts from businessman Jonnie Williams, are each the target of 13 of the 14 counts in the indictment, issued in the Richmond division of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.


The McDonnells have been summoned to appear in court in Richmond on Friday morning.

The indictments — which McDonnell’s friends and political allies have anticipated for weeks — would seem to mark the final termination of the Republican’s long career in public life.

( WATCH: McDonnell's political career from campaign to indictment)

Once touted as a strong potential presidential candidate, McDonnell’s political stature rapidly diminished over the course of 2013 amid a deepening investigation into his family’s ties to Williams, the CEO of the nutritional supplements manufacturing company Star Scientific.

The 43-page federal indictment details the vast array of favors Williams lavished upon the McDonnell family, including the use of Williams’s private aircraft and vacation home, a nearly $20,000 shopping spree for the first lady, a Rolex watch for the governor and catering fees for the wedding of the McDonnells’ daughter.

“The defendants participated in a scheme to use Robert McDonnell’s official position as the governor of Virginia to enrich the defendants and their family members by soliciting and obtaining payments, loans, gifts, and other things of value from [Williams] and Star Scientific,” prosecutors allege.

( PHOTOS: Bob McDonnell’s career)

In exchange, the indictment claims, Bob McDonnell and the governor’s office were “performing official actions on an as-needed basis, as opportunities arose, to legitimize, promote, and obtain research studies for Star Scientific’s products, including Anatabloc. And as also detailed below, the defendants took steps throughout that time to conceal the scheme.”

The indictment details what it calls a close correlation between Williams’s gifts to the McDonnell family and actions by the governor to support Star Scientific.

On July 31, 2011, for instance, Maureen McDonnell emailed Williams a photograph of the governor in Williams’s Ferrari, according to the indictment. The same evening, Bob McDonnell emailed the Virginia secretary of health requesting that one of the cabinet official’s deputies attend a briefing with Maureen McDonnell regarding the Star Scientific drug Anatabloc.

( Also on POLITICO: The GOP's tarnished boys)

In another episode the following year, the indictment states that “on or about Feb. 29, 2012,” Bob McDonnell met with Williams “to discuss potential ways that JW could transfer 50,000 shares of Star Scientific stock” to the McDonnells’ ownership. Around the same date, the McDonnells hosted a reception at the governor’s mansion “for healthcare leaders in Virginia,” including a number of Star Scientific executives and researchers, as well as “medical professionals whom Star Scientific was attempting to impress (including from Virginia research universities.)”

The McDonnells have admitted to taking gifts from Williams, but the governor has maintained that he never used his government position to reward the GOP donor and has denied legal wrongdoing. He told POLITICO in an October interview that there had been “absolutely nothing done for Star Scientific or Jonnie Williams or any business that isn’t appropriate.” He stuck to that line in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

“I repeat emphatically that I did nothing illegal for Mr. Williams in exchange for what I believed was his personal generosity and friendship,” McDonnell said. “We did not violate the law, and I will use every available resource and advocate I have for as long as it takes to fight these false allegations, and to prevail against this unjust overreach of the federal government.”

( PHOTOS: Scandal pols: Where are they now?)

In addition to defending himself against the accusations, McDonnell also said that the charges brought against him and his wife are an example of federal overreach.

“Federal officials in Washington, in their zeal to find a basis for charging Maureen and me, have decided to stretch the law to its breaking point in this case,” McDonnell said Tuesday. “I will use every available resource and advocate that I have for as long as it takes to fight and prevail against these false allegations and the unjust overreach of the federal government.”

Prosecutors said McDonnell and his wife face potentially decades in prison and millions in fines, though the penalty is unlikely to be that severe should they be convicted.

Virginia has famously lax rules about gift-giving, allowing politicians to accept virtually anything as long as they disclose their receipts. Federal prosecutors allege that the McDonnells consistently attempted to conceal or understate the extent of the favors they accepted from Williams.

The McDonnell gifts scandal cast a shadow over Virginia’s 2013 elections, which ended in the first Democratic sweep of the commonwealth’s statewide offices in a generation.

Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who was sworn in 10 days ago, issued a statement on the McDonnells’ indictment calling it a “sad day for Virginia.”

“I am obviously troubled by the charges that federal prosecutors have made against Governor McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, and the message that this period in our history sends about how government in this Commonwealth is run,” McAuliffe said. “It is my sincerest hope that justice will be served and that Virginians get the answers to which they are entitled.”

The Democratic Governors Association showed less restraint in responding to the McDonnell charges, tying the former Virginia governor to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who faces his own U.S. attorney investigation into allegations of political intimidation — and declaring that “the myth of Republican governors as the nation’s great ‘reformers’ is officially dead.”

While the Democrats seemed to be trumpeting the news, a longtime Republican campaign adviser made a similar point: “Coming on top of Christie, this damages the Republican brand horribly. Our governors are supposed to be our success story — our strong guys outside Washington. Now, it’s harder to draw the contrast with the other side. It’s short-term, but it’s very bad.”

Even a few weeks ago, Bob McDonnell appeared to be holding on to hope that there might be a next act in his political career. Speaking to local media earlier this month, he wouldn’t rule out another run for office in the future or an attempt to return to the governor’s office in four years.

“I’m 63 now, and a lot can happen in that time, I can’t say,” McDonnell said, according to Richmond’s NBC affiliate.

The Bob McDonnell described in the federal indictment is far less composed; it seems unlikely that a politician revealed in such a negative light could seek public office again, regardless of the disposition of his legal case.

Part of a family evidently consumed with the need to keep its metaphorical head above water, economically, McDonnell is shown in the document to have been under significant strain in his personal finances. “On or about Feb. 10, 2013,” the indictment says, the governor emailed his children seeking their help in renting out beach homes the family purchased as an investment.

“Kids. Asking for help. need to rent the beach houses at Sandbridge more. Willing to give your friends a discount for the times it’s tougher to rent,” McDonnell wrote, according to prosecutors.

The indictment notes that Maureen McDonnell forwarded the appeal for real estate help to Jonnie Williams.

Jose DelReal contributed to this report