Federal prosecutors charged Democratic Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas on Thursday with allegedly leading a criminal drug trafficking and money laundering operation.

A 45-page indictment that was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia charged Lucas and six others with conspiring to distribute and possess marijuana, conspiring to launder money, laundering money, and bribery.

But a spokesman, Brian Woolfolk, chief counsel for the L. Louise Lucas Legal Defense Fund, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that “this is the circus we always expected it to be, and we will wait for further details to have a more specific response.”