Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli made public an affidavit from former Virginia governor and Senate hopeful Tim Kaine that was used by convicted double murderer Jens Soering in his efforts to fight extradition to the United States in 1988, according to The Washington Times.
The GOP is using the document against Kaine in his election against George Allen, questioning why the Kaine administration never disclosed the document in the highly publicized case. Cucinelli is running for governor of Virginia and has endorsed Allen in the Senate race.
The document Cucinelli released is one written by Kaine in 1988 that makes no mention of the Soering case specifically, but talks about the complexities of litigating capital cases.
Soering committed the murders in Virignia but fled to the United Kingdom, where he was ultimately arrested. Soering’s defense team apparently used the document to try to keep Soering in the United Kingdom. Soering was returned to the United States. .
The Kaine camp denies any connection between Soering and Kaine.
VIA Times:
“Governor Kaine wrote this affidavit as an expert witness in a completely separate case that had nothing to do with Jen Soering,” spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said in an email. “Not once does it mention Jen Soering, nor does it deal with the specific circumstances of the Soering case.”
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In a conference call on the matter, Cuccinelli conceded that it is in the “realm of possibility” that Kaine could’ve written something in support of a completely different case that could’ve have been used in this matter. However, Cuccinelli defended his assertion that Kaine has not been completely forthcoming for his reasoning for offering Soering a transfer. He said that during their review of the case, they should’ve been aware that a document existed with his name attached to it, that was used in support of Soering.
On Friday, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Soering, challenging Gov. Bob McDonnell’s authority to rescind consent for him to be transferred from a prison to his native Germany.
According to The Virginian-Pilot, in his final days of office in 2010, Kaine consented with the Department of Justice to transfer Soerin to his Germany partially on the basis that the Virginia taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for his time in prison. Under the agreement, Soering would have served at least two years in a German prison before becoming eligible for release and would have been barred from returning to the United States.
* Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said that Republicans’ rejection of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion is not a political play. Instead, he said, expansion is fiscally irresponsible.
"Expanding Medicaid without fixing Medicaid is a terrible idea," McDonnell, a Republican, said on CNN's "State of the Union."
He added that he didn’t want to waste time and money to set up the expansion because, if elected, Mitt Romney said he would grant waivers to the state and work to repeal the law.
* Post columnist Robert McCartney said that Mayor Vincent Gray is in denial about his fate and he most certainly will have to resign.
But both Gray’s public comments and private conversations with associates suggest that he’s convinced himself that he did nothing wrong — or at least nothing for which Machen can catch him.
The mayor acts as if everyone will eventually accept that he was just out of the loop while his biggest campaign donor and some of his closest associates orchestrated the largest election fraud in 39 years of District home rule.
* Why are all D.C. mayors corrupt? Well, according to Rush Limbaugh, it’s because they’re all Democrats.
VIA The Rush Limbaugh Show transcript:
CNN is asking the question, "Why are all Washington mayors corrupt?" Let me answer that by asking another question. What party do they come from? They are all Democrats. What kind of Democrats are they? They are all liberal Democrats. You want to know why every Washington mayor is corrupt? It's because they are all liberal Democrats. That's what they do. (interruption) Yeah, Marion Barry said, "The b-i-itch set me up." That was the cocaine sting in the hotel room, "The b-i-itch set me up." Plus, you know, there's mood disorders that affect these people.
* The Post’s weekend story on the Mayor Gray scandal says that even as pressure mounts for him to resign, Gray is remaining focused on his work as mayor and is seemingly going about things as normal as possible.
Even as Gray was exhorting staff members to stay focused on their work, three D.C. Council members were preparing to call for his resignation. Gray went off to a groundbreaking in Northeast Washington and then he swore in members of the Commission on Human Rights. At 10 p.m., he played in his weekly softball game, under the lights at a field off South Capitol Street. His team won 23-2, and afterward, he happily posed for photographs with the opposing team.
Across the weeks and months that scandal has shadowed his administration, the mayor has sought to project the image of a man focused squarely on his job. He’s always had a reputation for working long hours and obsessing over the minutiae of governance.
* Gov. Bob McDonnell is urging President Obama to keep Congress in session to prevent hundreds in billions of dollars in automatic defense cuts, according to The RTD.
Congress recesses for August and the first part of $500 billion in defense cuts is scheduled to take effect in January unless Congress can agree on how to cut spending.
Virginia, according to The RTD, could lose 115,000 jobs in 2014 if the automatic defense cuts go through.
