Federal criminal trial of Jennifer McDonald continued to August due to late discovery of un-transferred evidentiary material

In the wake of another defense motion for a continuance of the now-federal district court prosecution of former Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development  Authority Executive Director Jennifer McDonald, her scheduled criminal trial on 34 counts related to the circa 2014-to-2018 FR-WC EDA “financial scandal” has a been pushed back to August. Well, actually August-September as the trial is anticipated to last five-plus weeks. McDonald remains free on bond, as she has been for the bulk of time since her initial arrests in July-August 2019.

McDonald’s criminal prosecution is now in the hands of the federal 10th Western District of Virginia, after transfers through the jurisdiction of state prosecutors offices in Warren and Rockingham Counties. It had been slated to begin May 15 and possibly run for as long as six weeks. In the wake of the granting of the continuance requested due to the recovery of some previously misplaced documents among the over one million pages of documentation attached to the cases, the trial is now scheduled for August 21 through September 29, 2023, on a ruling by United States District Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon.

“For reasons set forth in the motion, the Court finds that the ends of justice served by granting such a continuance outweigh the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial,” federal court records show Judge Dillon submitting in writing on April 11, citing 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(A) as the relevant applicable federal code. It wasn’t the first time “speedy trial” statutes have been waived at the request of the defense, or for that matter past prosecutors, during a legal process begun at the state level in Warren County in the summer of 2019.

Mugshot of Jennifer McDonald upon her July 2019 arrest on then-state driven criminal charges related to the FR-WC EDA ‘financial scandal’ involving the alleged misdirection of an estimated $26-million in FR-WC EDA and municipal assets during her tenure as the FR-WC EDA executive director.

In fact, criminal charges against McDonald and other defendants were dropped by the prosecutor’s office in Warren County primarily due to an inability to bring the cases to trial by speedy trial statute time-frames due to the volume of associated potential evidentiary material, as noted above now well over a million pages of documentation. Had those initially filed state indictments not met speedy trial statutes, various defense counsels could have petitioned the court to have the charges against their clients dropped.

In seeking the court to waive speedy trial statutes at this point to facilitate the defense’s preparation for trial with the recently recovered evidence, McDonald’s Assistant Federal Public Defender Andrea Harris wrote as background:

“On August 5, 2021, an Indictment was issued charging Ms. McDonald with 34 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering. By previous motion, the parties have jointly asked the court to designate this case as a complex case pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h). See ECF No. 29. Such was granted on June 27, 2022.”

That complexity was added to by the discovery that as many as 35 boxes of evidence had not been transferred from the state level prosecutions to the federal during the launching of Discovery motions at the federal level.

“As reported to the court at a previous status hearing on March 8, 2023, the government recently informed counsel of the existence of additional documents of the Economic Development Authority that had been turned over to a state Special Grand Jury pursuant to a subpoena in 2019. The documents included about 35 boxes of EDA documents that had been scanned and turned over to the state grand jury. However, the government recently learned that these documents were not turned over pursuant to the subsequent federal grand jury subpoena that had requested all the documents previously turned over to the special state grand jury. Upon learning of the existence of these documents, undersigned counsel worked with the attorney for the EDA to see if the documents in question could be located in order to be turned over to a trial subpoena issued by Ms. McDonald.

“On the late afternoon of March 27, 2023, the attorney for the EDA provided the un-redacted documents to counsel. Though counsel for Ms. McDonald were pleased to get the documents to begin review of them, the review has been hampered by their inability to also review the information with Ms. McDonald,” her counsel wrote to the court. Complications involved redactions sought by EDA or prosecution counsel for what were described as “privileged and confidential information” as well as “personally identifiable information” of some involved parties.

Added complications involved the potential availability or long-term health prospects of four prosecution witnesses. However, the defense agreed to allow those witnesses to be deposed ahead of trial, apparently so those depositions could be admitted as evidence were those witnesses unavailable at the new trial dates.

And with those agreements on emerging complexities in the already legally defined “complex” case, the defense motion for the continuance to August 21 was granted.