Virginia Governor McDonnell says he did not know about a whistleblower letter sent to his office

[Elmore Furth]

Amnesia was Reagan's best defense -- "I have no recollection."

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said Tuesday he was not aware of a whistle-blowing letter delivered to his office that would have alerted him to the actions of a convicted embezzler.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports Denise Kent sent a package of documents to the office of then-Attorney General McDonnell in October 2006, expressing her concerns with how former Virginia Finance Secretary John W. Forbes II was spending $5 million in grant money from the Virginia tobacco commission.

Kent's former husband, Chesterfield County resident D.L. Billet, Jr., tells the Times-Dispatch he has a signed receipt for those documents from an unidentified staffer in the attorney general's office.

"If there was a letter in 2006 that came to my office, it did not come to my attention," McDonnell said Tuesday on WTOP's Ask the Governor program with Mark Segraves.


McDonnell says he did not know about corruption whistleblower