Virginia state senator Louise Lucas, 82, was escorted from the Senate floor by federal agents in a DEA motorcade on Tuesday, after investigators determined that her family business was in fact a drug trafficking and money laundering operation run at a scale that required its own warehouse and a fleet of delivery vans.
According to the arrest report, Lucas personally oversaw the loading of shipments at a family-owned property, arriving before dawn in a Senate staff car and directing workers with the same gavel she uses to open session. Agents who raided the site found the operation organized with legislative precision: a night shift, a duty roster, and a color-coded schedule taped to the wall.
«We can make a lot of money,» Lucas is alleged to have told associates, a statement prosecutors say she repeated at every planning meeting while pointing at a whiteboard covered in revenue projections.
The operation was so extensive that the DEA had to borrow a second evidence truck from a neighboring field office. Local residents reported seeing unmarked vans making deliveries on a timetable so regular that neighbors set their clocks by them.
Lucas, who has served in the Virginia Senate for decades, now faces federal charges. A spokesperson for the Senate said the chamber would continue to meet, but that the sergeant-at-arms has been instructed to check all family businesses before the next session.