As VP pick, Kaine scrutinized for receiving gifts,

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is critical.

Barr PharWASHINGTON — maceuticals gave Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia a ride on a private jet to a meeting in Aspen, Colorado, at a time in 2006 when it was lobbying him over issues related to its drug sales, state records show.

Dominion Resources, Virginia’s largest electric utility and a lobbying force in the state’s capital, Richmond, picked up the tab for a trip Kaine took that same year to the college basketball Final Four tournament (and a funeral) in Indianapolis, according to the records.

McCandlish Holton PC, a law and lobbying firm that represented Virginia’s small vineyards and worked closely with Kaine’s office to create a new system for distributing wine produced by the vine- yards, presented Kaine with four cases of wine in 2007, the records show, the same year he signed the legislation into law.

Under Virginia’s lax ethics rules at the time, the gifts, which had a total value of more than $160,000, were all legal as long as they were disclosed.

But with Kaine’s selection Friday as Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate, the gifts he received in the four years he served as Virginia’s chief executive and his time as lieutenant governor before that are certain to be cited by his Republican critics as a sign that Kaine, who is now a U.S. senator, is not as squeaky clean as he portrays himself.

“It would be naive to think a pharmaceutical company like Teva was not interested in maintaining access to the governor as a result of a gift of that size,” said Andrew P. Miller, a former Democratic attorney general in Virginia, who now works as an energy industry lawyer and lobbyist, referring to Teva Phar- maceuticals, which bought Barr in 2008.

Donald Trump, the Repub- lican presidential nominee, wasted little time in starting to attack Kaine, branding him on Friday night as “corrupt Kaine” and con- tinuing with the criticism during a Sunday morning news interview.

“He took over $160,000 of gifts. And they said, well they weren’t really gifts. They were suits, and trips and lots of different things. Over $160,000,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think to me it is a big prob- lem.”

Kaine’s acceptance of gifts has been reported on at times, dating to when he was in the governor’s office. But an examination by the New York Times of archival email traffic from Kaine’s tenure as governor shows that he received gifts, in some cases, around the same time he and his staff were consid- ering official government requests from these donors.

In Barr’s case, the email records show that executives from the company asked Kaine to intervene with the Food and Drug Administra- tion on its behalf in August 2006, just days before the flight to Aspen for a meet- ing of the Democratic Governors Association, later valued at $12,000 in Kaine’s disclosure report.

Kaine signed the letter to the FDA — a draft of which had been written by Barr — as requested before leaving on the trip, and a company lobbyist suggested that he was prepared to follow up during the plane ride.

“The Gov will be on a plane on Friday with Phil Smith,” Eileen Filler-Corn, an aide to the governor, wrote in an August 2006 email, after she had met with Smith, then a lobbyist from Barr. “Phil will likely speak with to Gov about him sending a letter in support of the petition in Aspen this weekend, hence this email to ya’ll.”

State records compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project show that a total of 139 companies or individuals gave about 220 gifts or reimbursements for travel to Kaine to work-related con- ferences while he served as governor from 2006-10 and lieutenant governor from 2002-06.