The 82-year-old Portsmouth Democrat, the first Black woman to serve as Senate president pro tempore, surrendered Thursday. Her legal team called the case a “circus.”
By EEW Magazine Online News Editors
State Sen. L. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, in the Virginia Senate during a reconvened legislative session to vote on the budget in Richmond on June 22, 2026. (Mike Kropf/Richmond Times-Dispatch via Getty Images)
Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, the first Black woman to serve as president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate and one of the most powerful Democrats in the commonwealth, surrendered to federal authorities Thursday. A grand jury indicted her on charges that she ran a family marijuana business as a criminal enterprise and used her office to protect it.
The eight-count indictment, filed Oct. 14 in the Eastern District of Virginia, was unsealed Thursday. It names Lucas, 82, and six co-defendants, including two of her daughters and a grandson. Lucas faces five of the counts.
The charges in the case include racketeering conspiracy, marijuana distribution, money laundering, honest-services fraud through bribery, maintaining drug-involved premises, firearms possession in furtherance of drug trafficking and wire fraud, according to the indictment. Each defendant faces a different combination of counts.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the charges at a news conference in Norfolk. Blanche said the indictment reveals “a public servant who put her own financial interests before the people she was elected to serve.” Patel described a five-year scheme worth an estimated $4.5 million.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, center, speaks at a news conference in Norfolk, Va., on Oct. 22, 2026, announcing the indictment of state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Theophani Stamos, left, and FBI Director Kash Patel, right, look on. (Steve Helber/AP)
Prosecutors allege that Lucas and her daughter Lisa Lucas-Burke opened The Cannabis Outlet in Portsmouth in 2021 and that the group, which prosecutors call the “Lucas Enterprise,” acquired and distributed at least 100 kilograms of marijuana and laundered the proceeds through family business entities. The indictment says agents recovered marijuana and firearms from both of the group’s stores.
Prosecutors also say Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services issued violation notices to The Cannabis Outlet in 2023 and 2024 for selling products that did not comply with state law, and that Lucas failed to disclose her interest in the business on required state financial disclosure forms.
The bribery allegations center on Virginia’s effort to launch a legal recreational marijuana market. Prosecutors say Lucas met a co-conspirator at her office in the Capitol complex to receive a partial repayment and spoke with other officials, including legislators, about that person’s qualification for a recreational license, depending on whether she received a bribery payment.
The indictment quotes Lucas telling an unindicted co-conspirator that she wanted a recreational license to build “generational wealth” for her family, adding, “this is my last chance.” In a March phone call with a state lawmaker, prosecutors say, Lucas said she needed the recreational industry to begin because “when I did it, it was obviously illegal.”
Brian Woolfolk, chief counsel for the L. Louise Lucas Legal Defense Fund, responded in a statement: “This is the circus we always expected it to be, and we will wait for further details to have a more specific response.”
The case follows a May 6 FBI search of Lucas’ Portsmouth office and the cannabis shop she co-owns. At the time, Lucas called the investigation a tactic to silence her, and many Democrats questioned its basis. Lucas had been a leading voice in Virginia Democrats’ push to redraw the state’s congressional map, which voters approved in April before the Virginia Supreme Court struck it down in May.
FBI personnel enter a building in Portsmouth, Va., on May 6, 2026, the day federal agents searched state Sen. L. Louise Lucas’ office and a cannabis shop she co-owns. (John Clark/AP)
Blanche rejected claims of political targeting Thursday. “We don’t do political paybacks,” he said. NBC News has reported that the investigation into Lucas predates the Trump administration. The announcement also came 12 days before the midterm elections, an unusual step, since federal authorities have typically avoided overt actions against political figures so close to Election Day. Lucas is not on the ballot this year.
Lucas’ career has been marked by firsts. A Portsmouth native and Norfolk State University graduate, she became the first female shipfitter at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1971. She has served in the Virginia Senate since 1992 and chairs the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, which controls the state budget. In 2020, she was charged in connection with a protest at a Portsmouth Confederate monument.
A judge dismissed those charges that November at the request of the city’s elected prosecutor.
The other defendants are Lucas-Burke, Theresa Lucas-Lamb, Ryan Eichelberger, Carlton Upton Jr., Prince Albert William Hudson III and Tameka Johnson. All seven were scheduled to make initial appearances before a federal magistrate judge in Norfolk on Thursday afternoon.
An indictment is a formal accusation. Lucas and her co-defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.