The star witness against Duncan Hunter: his wife

SAN DIEGO — By her own telling, Margaret Hunter’s marriage to Rep. Duncan Hunter was a love-at-first-sight relationship. It was a union forged in politics and mutual attraction that until recently appeared to be little short of a storybook romance.

Then known as Margaret Jankowski, the high school senior first met Hunter on election night in 1992, when his father, also named Duncan Hunter, won his seventh term in the House.

“I knew that day I wanted to marry him,” Margaret Hunter said of her future husband. “I broke it to him two weeks later.”

The couple dated for more than five years before their 1998 wedding. By 2008, when the senior Hunter resigned to make room for his son to succeed him, the family had grown to include three children.

The idyllic relationship was ruptured last summer, when the Hunters were indicted on 60 criminal counts and accused of using more than $250,000 in political contributions for family bills, vacations and personal expenses, including hundreds of dollars in airline fees to fly the family’s pet rabbit across the country.

The couple initially denied all charges and appeared united in court. But now Margaret Hunter is no longer wearing her wedding ring, and she is a star witness against her husband.

Margaret Hunter pleaded guilty last week to one count of conspiracy, a felony that could get her up to five years behind bars. Experts say the plea deal also erodes any spousal-privilege claim asserted by the congressman, who maintains he did nothing illegal.

“Circuit courts have held that the marital-communications privilege does not apply to communications having to do with present or future crimes in which both spouses participated,” said Michael Semanchik, managing attorney at the California Innocence Project. “He is not going to be able to prevent her from testifying since they were both part of this conspiracy.”

According to the 22-page plea agreement she signed with federal prosecutors, Margaret Hunter and her husband were well aware their spending was illegal.

“Even after the [campaign] treasurer warned [Duncan] Hunter that defendant’s personal use of the campaign credit card was a serious problem, Hunter allowed defendant [Margaret] to continue to use a campaign credit card to make personal purchases,” the plea deal states.

The deal makes clear that Margaret Hunter has been cooperating with prosecutors for some time and calls on her to “fully cooperate with the investigation and prosecution of others.”

“If defendant breaches this agreement, defendant will not be able to enforce any provisions, and the government will be relieved of all its obligations under this agreement,” it states.

Jason Forge, a former prosecutor who now works in private practice in San Diego, said Margaret Hunter’s decision to accept a plea deal almost certainly means the couple are at odds.

“Typically when you charge two spouses, it is extremely rare to have one resolve their case without knowing what the resolution is going to be for the other,” he said.

Before the indictment, Duncan Hunter blamed some of the questionable spending on his son. Later, Hunter appeared to point the finger at his wife, who had previously worked as the campaign treasurer.

“Whatever she did, that’ll be looked at too,” he told Fox News.

According to the plea deal, Hunter concealed from his wife “his use of campaign funds to facilitate certain personal relationships.”

That could be another reason Margaret Hunter agreed to the plea deal, Forge said. According to the indictment, the congressman’s spending on someone identified as Individual 14 lasted for more than a year, including “a 468-mile trip to Virginia Beach” and “a personal stay at the Liaison Capitol Hill” hotel in 2011.