SPILLER OF BEANS: Meet The Chef Talking To The FBI About Bob McDonnell

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How to cook reTHUG Goose recipe....





When he was the executive chef of Virginia’s governor’s mansion, Todd Schneider kept track of what the seven members of the state’s first family liked and didn’t like to eat. Schneider knew that Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) was a brussels sprouts man. He knew that the first lady, Maureen McDonnell, was partial to crab-seasoned popcorn. He knew that everyone liked bananas. “I’m in heaven here,” Schneider told The Richmond Times-Dispatch in a July 2010 interview, while standing in front of a rosemary bush in the gubernatorial garden. Three years later, Todd Schneider is far from heaven. Accused of taking property from the governor’s mansion kitchen, Schneider is facing several charges of embezzlement in Virginia court. At the same time, he has become a key player in the scandal swirling around the McDonnells and Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.


Revelations about the relationship between the McDonnell family, Cuccinelli, and a prominent political donor and businessman, Jonnie Williams Sr., have been trickling out for weeks. Williams, the CEO of a struggling dietary supplement company called Star Scientific, has given McDonnell tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds over the years, as well as reportedly tens of thousands of dollars in undisclosed money and other gifts. The undisclosed funds are now at the center of federal and state investigations, according to The Washington Post. According to a court motion filed at the end of April by his attorney, Schneider began providing state and federal authorities with information about Williams’ relationship to the McDonnells over a year ago. On Feb. 10, 2012, Schneider met with agents from the Virginia State Police and the FBI. A month later, on March 8, 2012, Schneider and his attorney again met with the agents, along with Patrick Dorgan, a senior assistant state attorney general.



“[Schneider] described Williams’ efforts to ingratiate himself within the Mansion with gifts Williams had provided the McDonnells, including payments for their daughter’s wedding in the summer of June, 2011, a summer vacation in 2011, and the use of expensive cars and a private jet,” Schneider’s attorney, Steven Benjamin, wrote in the April motion, describing last March’s meeting. “Todd Schneider also discussed the McDonnells’ promotion of Star Scientific products, including the introduction of Anatabloc (a food supplement) to [Medical College of Virginia] doctors at a lunch Todd Schneider cooked at the Mansion on August 30, 2012.” Schneider was dismissed from his job at the governor’s mansion last March, the same month he met with Dorgan and the FBI. Media reports at the time wrote that Schneider left amid a state police investigation into alleged “improprieties involving the kitchen operations at the governor’s mansion,” as a Virginia State Police spokesperson put it to The Washington Post. A year later, in March 2013, Schneider was indicted.



All of this must have been inconceivable when Schneider got his job at the executive mansion in 2010. He had spent decades in the food world, mostly in catering, and claimed ties to food stars like Martha Stewart and Paula Deen and clients like former president Bill Clinton, former vice president Dick Cheney and famed movie director Steven Spielberg. In 2011, he appeared alongside Maureen McDonnell in an appearance on the Lifetime show “The Balancing Act.” He fed the show’s host, Beth Troutman, a cookie, and touted the importance of food in the governor’s mansion. “We’ve made the kitchen the heart of the house,” Schneider said during the appearance. “So it’s great that the governor comes down, the first lady, and we’re like a big family here.”




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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/07/todd_schneider_bob_mcdonnell.php?ref=fpa

[malaise]

1. BLINGHAZI is as delilsh as his cooking

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2. "BLINGHAZI"...LOL!

That had me rollin' this morn!!

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[rurallib]

3. he's a whistle blower. McDonnell should have him locked up

sarcasm for the humor impaired