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Maureen McDonnell’s former chief of staff says then-Star Scientific CEO Jonnie R. Williams Sr. agreed to help her leave her state job by becoming her lead client at a consultancy, but he later reneged, according to a draft letter she wrote in January 2012 after leaving her state position.

The four-page draft from Mary-Shea Sutherland to Williams, filed as an exhibit in the former first couple’s corruption case, spells out how Sutherland carried out extensive communications with Williams through text messages, unbeknownst to then-Gov. Bob McDonnell and the first lady.

“In June, following the trip to Florida where I accompanied the first lady; you called me to say that I was the type of person you wanted working for you and that you would pay me outside of my job with the state to help you,” Sutherland writes.

There is no indication in the filing that Sutherland sent Williams the letter. Rather it memorializes private exchanges between Sutherland and Williams.

Lawyers for the former governor allege that Sutherland was angling for a job with Williams — now the prosecution’s key witness in the McDonnells’ July corruption trial — when she organized an Executive Mansion luncheon for Star Scientific in August 2011, two months before she left her state job.