Once rising star and now plummeting bolide Gov Bob McDonnell, staunch neo-Christian wingnut who gained national infame pushing a law forcing poor pregnant women to submit to an invasive vaginal probe, may be in even bigger trouble than we thought. And we thought he was in pretty big trouble already:

WaPo — Maureen McDonnell, the first lady of Virginia, twice purchased thousands of shares of stock in Star Scientific, a spokesman for McDonnell’s legal team confirmed Friday night. The stock was bought and held in the same time frame that she and Gov. Robert F. McDonnell were taking steps to promote the dietary supplement company.

Spokesman Rich Galen said the first lady did not inform the governor either time she purchased stock, which Galen said she bought for herself and her children.

This is the same crowd who went bananas over Clinton’s commodity trading account and other investments back in the go-go 90s. Maybe the VA first Lady really didn’t tell him, but that would be incredibly stupid in any case and quite possibly illegal as hell, especially considering the alleged timing here:

Bill Burck, an attorney for the first lady, said she purchased 6,000 shares of Star stock on June 1, 2011. That was the same day she spoke at a gathering of doctors and investors in Florida and told them she supported the company and believed its new product could be used to lower health-care costs in Virginia. At $5.18 a share, the purchase cost Maureen McDonnell more than $30,000 and came just a few days after Williams had written a $50,000 check to the first lady.

By my old fashioned arithmetic, being paid 50k one day and buying 30k of stock the next nets 20k no matter what the stock does (And that 50k is just the beginning of the reported gifts and perks offered by the same guy to the McDonnells). In this case a stock with newish ticker symbol STSI (Used to be CIGX) has been more than cut in half on that reported buy price. If that’s the same one it sure hasn’t paid off. Then again I’m surprised it’s still trading at all, that somewhere, some people are still buying it, considering the allegations that have come out and been confirmed in one way or another. If I were a really suspicious guy, I’d start seeing if there was anyway to find out whose been buying that stock in quantity throughout this crisis, because it’s possible someone with deep pockets has been doing just that to try to support the price on behalf of powerful people who got suckered into it.

I don’t know how this will end up: Past performance is no guarantee of future returns^tm. But when money gets lost, the livelihood of wealthy people is put in jeopardy because of it, and the terms plea bargaining or prison sentence make an appearance, that’s a powerful triple combo. Often times big dominoes start to tumble fast. It’ll be interesting to see which ones fall first and loudest here.