Welp, there’s your October surprise.

Louise Lucas was arrested yesterday along with family members. She’s been indicted by the FBI for running a criminal “enterprise” that illegally sold marijuana and then laundered the proceeds.
Lucas is a state-level official, but a loud and powerful one who played a big role in the failed redistricting effort in Virginia earlier this year. The indictment and arrest of a powerful Democrat with some national prominence so close to an election should raise some eyebrows.

What do we know, and how should we think about this? With the election looming, here are some of my initial thoughts.

The Evidence

There’s a lot going on in the 45-page indictment. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read a couple of court docs in my day. And this one seems to have… a particular TONE to it? There’s a kitchen sink structure here that really gives me pause.

The indictment claims the Lucas enterprise was “using the political influence of LOUISE LUCAS to enact legislation and regulations to financially benefit the Lucas Enterprise.” Uh, is there an actual CRIME here? Sure, of course crony capitalism is bad, but that’s the kind of “legalized corruption” that our system often allows. (Have you heard about how campaign funding works in Virginia?) Same with another charge, “directing, obtaining, and influencing the provision of marijuana licenses to entities in which members and associates retained an expected to procure a financial interest.” Helping your friends and family get something is part of politics. Again, of course it’s lamentable and terrible. But is it actually ILLEGAL?

The establishment of this “enterprise” is meant to lead to a federal racketeering conviction. Again, I’m not a prosecutor here, but my understanding is that these kinds of charges are actually hard to prove, so the DOJ has its work cut out for it. The indictment also includes bribery charges, but it’s not clear to me in the fact pattern established later in the indictment tells us WHO was being bribed. There’s even some mention of her arrests during the protests 6 years ago, plus the firing of a police chief? It’s a little like all the spaghetti is being thrown against the wall to see what sticks. We’ll learn more, but it’s very VERY fuzzy at this point.

Then there’s the money laundering part, where the indictment makes a lot out of various corporate entities created by Lucas and her family. That could be shady – but this part also seems a little… sloppy at best? The doc notes that in 2019, an un-indicted co-conspirator registered “Hair for Dayzzzz LLC” and notes that “the exact nature of this business is unknown.” A quick google search reveals that there’s a Portsmouth beauty-supply store with that name. Maybe that’s just a coincidence (although… FOUR letter Z’s says it’s not), but it seems to me I now know the exact nature of this business. Is there something wrong with the DOJ’s firewall that their agents can’t do a simple search?

It seems like the real fire for all this smoke is the one enterprise purpose of “obtaining and illegally distributing large quantities of illegal marijuana.” The indictment includes evidence that big checks changing hands, text messages about “needing more flower”, and claims that “law enforcement” (unclear what level) bought marijuana from the Lucas store. If that’s true, then that is where the real, obvious criminal activity is. The fact that there are “unindicted co-conspirators” suggests the feds may have people who have evidence and are willing to testify against Lucas and her family.

Still, all the rest of this stuff — essentially, making Lucas out to be Tony Soprano — makes it much harder to take these charges seriously. If the only purpose of this indictment was to hold a criminal accountable, then what’s all this other stuff for? One last example: the indictment, and some subsequent coverage, makes a lot of Lucas using the phrase “generational wealth.” I suppose this phrase suggests the scale of Lucas’ ambition here, but by itself, it just suggests Lucas wants to build something for her family. (The lack of opportunities for generational wealth is a part of the story of Black families in America, by the way.) But again: wanting to be rich is NOT a crime. Why is it essentially listed as a crime in this indictment?

So that’s why we HAVE to consider the broader political context.

Political Theater

The timing of this arrest, coming two weeks before a national mid-term election where Republicans are widely seen as floundering, is suspicious at best. The fact that the FBI Director and Attorney General (!) stood on the dais in Norfolk yesterday to announce the arrest is… a lot. A different leader might recognize that their presence would unnecessarily politicize a criminal investigation. But AG Todd Blanche, whose main qualification for the job seems to be that he was Trump’s lawyer, obviously thought otherwise.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump’s Department of Justice has become a wing of his political operation, with Blanche’s effort to set up a billion-dollar taxpayer slush fund for Trump to reward political allies and plenty of politically charged prosecutions. The most latest, and egregious, example of the latter is the DOJ’s investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration paperwork. (Apparently it’s a good use of law enforcement to see if a 12-year old child from a war-torn country was confused about her birth date.)

Prosecutors are very often political animals. Like any law enforcement leaders, they like big busts, high-profile arrests and convictions, and dope on the table. But for the best of them, there’s also an effort to stay out of obviously partisan politics. The Department of Justice has long operated under the norm of a “60-day rule” which, while fuzzy in practice, generally suggests that high-profile political prosecutions should be avoided around elections. Clearly that guidance is not operating here.

One thing I’m seeing a lot of in coverage of the arrest is the idea that this investigation was apolitical, or at least bipartisan. When Lucas’ offices and shop were raided earlier this year, “a person familiar with the search” told the AP the investigation was “opened during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration”. There’s no clear idea who this source was. They could have been a career FBI agent wanting the public to know this is a real investigation, and not a political witch hunt. But they could also be just about anyone from the Trump administration wanting to provide cover… for a political witch hunt! Biden-era agents and prosecutors may have started and continued an investigation over time, or they could have dropped the matter until it was resurrected under a more politicized DOJ. There’s no real way to know, but it’s an awfully convenient “fact” about another conveniently timed (and staged) part of the prosecution.

Finally, the irony of Trump’s lawyer/AG and Kash “Date-Night” Patel indicting a legislator for “using political influence” to “financially benefit” her family — again, these people WORK FOR DONALD TRUMP — is pretty thick.

What does this mean for the mid-terms?

I talked to Marty Davis at the Virginia Free Press here about some of the political ramifications.

If members of the Trump administration saw this prosecution as an attempt to resuscitate Republican campaigns in Virginia — a big if, of course — then I don’t think they’re going to be very successful. I doubt many Republicans who were sitting on their hands are going to mobilized by the indictment of a Democratic state legislator. If anything, this will fire up Democrats who are energized to vote against Trump in some fashion.

So I don’t think that the DOJ has done Jen Kiggans or Rob Wittman any favors. Democrats have tried to suggest that Kiggans is Trump’s war buddy and Wittman is himself a corrupt politician enriching himself on stock trades. This Lucas arrest likely just fuels these narratives, and the sense that Trump is the enemy in this election. If anything, I would expect this helps a late break even more towards Democrats.

What does this mean for AFTER the mid-terms?

In Virginia, there’s always another election. And this prosecution will not be going away anytime soon, so it will be a factor in next year’s session and state legislative elections. But the fact that a prominent Democrat up for re-election is under federal scrutiny is by no means a win for Republicans.

I doubt Lucas is going anywhere. Bob Holsworth suggested in the WaPo that her political influence might lessen while she’s under indictment, and it will be interesting to see how her Democratic rivals (including Governor Spanberger) might be less inclined to indulge Lucas this year. Still, the Senator almost certainly will lawyer up and stay in office. The fact that her entire family is implicated also means that it might be hard to tie the Senator herself to charges. (If everyone is guilty, maybe no one is.)

The Bottom Line

In a better world, the fog of politics wouldn’t cloud over what might actually be criminal activity by a politician. But we don’t live in that world. So I urge caution about taking this indictment at face value, not just because the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is a good one. I think we’re going to learn a lot more about this case in the weeks and months to come. It could be everyone is the bad guy here.

RICHARD MEAGHER is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia; he writes the RVA Politics newsletter on Substack.