Asked by Dry why he and others with jet aircraft make them available to politicians, Williams said, “If you have a Virginia company, you want to make sure you have access to these people, and the airplane accomplishes that.”

“He’s a politician, I’m a businessman,” Williams said.

Williams said that in December 2009 he met the McDonnells at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, where he offered to help Maureen get an Oscar de la Renta dress. Williams said Maureen told her husband: “This is great. Jonnie’s going to help me get a dress for the inauguration.”

However, Williams said he later got a call from a lawyer in the governor’s office thanking him for the offer but that he could not buy her the dress.

“She wasn’t happy about it. She was disappointed,” he said of Maureen. She said she would take “a rain check,” he said.

Williams said that in October 2010, the McDonnells asked if they could use his jet to fly to California and he agreed. He took a commercial flight to intercept them so he could fly back with McDonnell.