Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the Virginia attorney general, did not violate ethics rules in failing to disclose some $5,100 in gifts from a corporate executive, an independent investigator said on Thursday.
After looking into a possible conflict of interest, the investigator, Michael N. Herring, the commonwealth’s attorney for Richmond, Va., also concluded that Mr. Cuccinelli had exerted no influence over his office’s defense of a lawsuit filed by the executive’s company against the state while Mr. Cuccinelli owned about $20,000 of the company’s stock.
The finding was a clear victory for Mr. Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor. He has sought to distance himself from an ethics scandal shadowing Gov. Bob McDonnell because of Mr. McDonnell’s acceptance of some $145,000 in gifts from the same executive, Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the chief of Star Scientific. The gifts are the focus of a federal grand jury investigation in Richmond.
Still, Democrats indicated that they were not done with the matter and would continue to try to use it against Mr. Cuccinelli in his race with Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee.
“Ken Cuccinelli avoided prosecution for disguising his conflict of interest with Star Scientific and Jonnie Williams because of Virginia’s extraordinarily weak ethics laws,’’ said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Virginia.
Over three months, Mr. Herring said in a nine-page report, he and a deputy interviewed Mr. Cuccinelli and his staff and reviewed the attorney general’s required annual financial disclosure forms to determine if he had violated the state’s Conflict of Interest Act.
Most of the report’s findings of facts had emerged in earlier news accounts since the scandal over Mr. Williams broke in April.
Mr. Cuccinelli did not publicly disclose ownership of Star Scientific stock until October 2012, nine months after it was required by law. He also belatedly revealed some gifts from Mr. Williams, including two vacations at a lake house in 2010 and 2012, which he did not report until April of this year.
He has said his omissions were inadvertent, and the independent investigator agreed.
“Although one cannot help but question whether repeated omissions of Williams are coincidence or a pattern reflecting intent to conceal, the disclosure of several other benefits and gifts from Williams in his original statements suggests that the attorney general was not attempting to conceal the relationship,’’ Mr. Herring’s report said.
The report also concluded that, although Mr. Cuccinelli owned Star Scientific stock while his office was defending the state against a tax lawsuit the company brought in July 2011, there was no evidence that he had intervened. “Investigators interviewed members of his office staff and found no evidence that Mr. Cuccinelli’s personal financial interest affected his judgment or that of his employees during the litigation,’’ it said.
Mr. Cuccinelli had requested the outside investigation into his financial disclosures. After the report was released, he said in a statement, “There was no legal requirement to refer my own filings to a commonwealth’s attorney to review, but I did it because I wanted to be completely transparent with the public.â€
The report filled in a few unknown details in the Star Scientific saga, including how Mr. Cuccinelli first met Mr. Williams. In December 2009, Mr. Cuccinelli, newly elected but not yet sworn in, attended an event in New York City in place of Mr. McDonnell, and Mr. Williams flew him back on his private plane.
“He informed investigators that he first met Williams during the event, at which point Williams offered the use of his various properties,’’ Mr. Herring’s report said.
Mr. Cuccinelli also told investigators that it was he who had asked Mr. Williams, twice, for the use of his vacation home on Smith Mountain Lake. The attorney general and his family spent Thanksgiving there in 2010, a trip valued at $1,500, and returned for a week’s vacation in 2012, valued at $3,000.
