EDA hearings done for the day – Let’s go get McDonald again

Maybe that’s the reason the larger Warren County Circuit Courtroom “A” wasn’t available to move into to accommodate the full house in diminutive Courtroom “B” for the EDA criminal and County Supervisors Removal Petition hearings Monday morning – new indictments brewing from the EDA Special Grand Jury that often meets in the larger Courtroom A.

According to the Rappahannock-Shenandoah-Warren County Regional Jail website former EDA Executive Director Jennifer McDonald was arrested Monday afternoon on four new felony indictments related to the EDA financial scandal.

She was arrested by the Virginia State Police and booked at 1:25 p.m., an hour-and-25 minutes after the Removal Petition Show Cause Hearing adjourned at noon to close the day’s open court proceedings regarding the EDA. She was released just over an hour later at 2:26 p.m. on what appeared to be a $5,000 secured bond.

Jennifer McDonald knows the routine at RSW Jail bookings. Monday she was arrested for a third time, on four additional charges related to the EDA financial scandal. Photo/RSW Jail website

If our memory serves us that is McDonald’s third arrest, raising the number of financial felony charges she faces to 32. She was arrested on four initial counts on May 24, saw that number climb to 14 while incarcerated without bond as a flight risk. She was eventually granted bond by new presiding Judge Bruce D. Albertson on July 31. Albertson took over EDA cases as Judge Clifford L. Athey Jr. left for the Virginia State Appeals Court.

The 42-year-old McDonald was arrested on 14 new charges on August 23, the same day her husband Samuel North and business partner Donald Poe were arrested on related charges, Poe for the second time after first being charged on three counts in the EDA case on July 23. After spending the weekend in jail, all three were bonded out Monday, August 26.

On Monday, October 28, McDonald was out on a $50,000 secured bond on the 28 previous charges she has been arrested on. Noting the fluid nature of the Special Grand Jury investigation regarding his client, at an earlier hearing McDonald’s criminal attorney Peter Greenspun had asked for some arrangement to prevent repeated, prolonged incarcerations for every new charge levied against his client.

Perhaps that ability to post a smaller, secured bond to obtain immediate release is that arrangement.

The new charges are Fraud, Uttering; Larceny – Embezzlement – $200 plus; Money Laundering – Financial Transaction from known felony activity; and Fraud – Obtain money by false pretenses, $500 (or more).