2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal
Encyclopedia
The 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal involves the use of a telemarketing
firm hired by that state's Republican Party
(NHGOP) for election tampering. The tampering involved using a call center to jam the phone lines of a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) operation. In the end, 900 calls were made for 45 minutes of disruption to the Democratic-leaning call centers.
During that state's 2002 election
for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert C. Smith
, the NHGOP hired GOP Marketplace, based in Northern Virginia
, to jam another phone bank being used by the state Democratic Party
and the firefighter
s' union for efforts to turn out voters on behalf of then-governor
Jeanne Shaheen
on Election Day
. John E. Sununu
, the Republican candidate, won a narrow victory. In addition to criminal prosecutions, disclosures in the case have come from a civil suit filed by the state's Democratic Party against the state's Republican Party (now settled).
Four men have been convicted of, or pled guilty to, federal crimes and sentenced to prison
for their involvement . One conviction has been reversed by an appeals court, a decision prosecutors are appealing. James Tobin
, freed on appeal, was later indicted on charges of lying to the FBI during the original investigation.
, the state capital, were notified by Democratic workers on the day of the election that they were receiving repeated telephone calls, terminating after five seconds, which were interfering with their efforts to reach voters and offer rides to the polls. For at least an hour and a half at midday they were unable to make any outgoing calls. Verizon was later able to stop most of these calls, but whoever had made them had violated state laws against telephone harassment.
State authorities found the calls came from out of state, and so brought in their federal counterparts. They were eventually traced to Mylo Enterprises, a Pocatello
, Idaho
-based company that ran phone banks.
The New Hampshire Union Leader
reported on it February 8, 2003. The story forced the resignation of state GOP executive director Charles McGee shortly afterward, when he admitted lying to the paper. Later, prosecutors said that he had come up with the idea of disrupting Democratic communications after seeing a flyer put out by the Shaheen campaign with the numbers. Drawing on his military background, he decided to disrupt "enemy communications" and called several telemarketing
firms he knew to have Republican sympathies. However, none of them wanted anything to do with the idea.
However, James Tobin
, then Northeast
field director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee
(NRSC), put McGee in touch with GOP Marketplace, a Northern Virginia
firm run by Allen Raymond
, which had been hired by the New Hampshire party for similar voter-turnout efforts. McGee had lied in claiming to be unaware of this.
Steve Kornacki of politicsnj.com discovered that Raymond, a New Jersey
native, had worked for James Treffinger, a former gubernatorial candidate then under indictment
for a phone scandal during that state's 2001 Republican primary
for the senatorial nomination in which calls were made smearing two of his opponents. A prominent figure in that indictment, possibly a co-conspirator, was an unnamed Republican consultant believed to be Raymond (during the later trial of James Tobin, the prosecution said that GOP Marketplace had worked for a Senate campaign in New Jersey and that that work had led to a criminal indictment). During the 2002 Super Bowl
, Raymond's firm had placed calls to prospective voters that not only attacked one of Treffinger's rivals but purported to be from another.
New Hampshire Republicans were initially angry and demanded not only an investigation, but a refund of the $15,600 they paid GOP Marketplace. Two weeks later, however, McGee's replacement, Jayne Millerick, dropped the request.
pled guilty to several felony charges in federal court in Concord. McGee followed suit the next month. Joshua Micah Marshall's blog noted that Todd Hinnen, the prosecutor in Raymond's case, indicated to the court that Raymond had been contacted about the phone jamming idea by "a former colleague who was then an official in a national political organization." Later on that month, both he and the Union Leader reported that this unnamed third individual had a significant role in the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign.
In an op-ed for the Concord Monitor
, Smith called the phone-jamming "an outrage" and deplored the lack of Republican anger over "this despicable action by pathetic political hacks." He also implied that the phone jamming may have denied Shaheen victory.
regional director for the Bush campaign. He resigned October 15, and was indicted December 1, then arraigned December 13 on two criminal counts each of conspiring to make harassing telephone calls and aiding and abetting telephone harassment.
was sentenced to five months in federal prison on February 8, 2005, for his role. A month later, Charles McGee received seven months. James Tobin
refused to cooperate with investigators as his trial approached. During Tobin's trial, questions arose about the source of the money involved in funding the phone jamming and his defense.
In July, the Union Leader reported that one of Tobin's attorneys told the court he was representing the defendant in his capacity as an employee of the Republican National Committee
(RNC). Since the RNC had stated that Tobin was acting on his own in a rogue operation, it was asked, why would they be paying for his defense?
In August, the RNC finally confirmed that it had spent more than $722,000 for Tobin's defense by the Washington
firm of Williams & Connolly
. "This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing," a spokesperson told the Associated Press
.
The Union Leader reported in February 2006 that the RNC had paid $1.7 million to Williams on the day Tobin was sentenced, for a total of $2.5 million, and would neither confirm nor deny that it was still paying his legal expenses. The RNC's first financial report of 2006 indicated that it by then spent another $330,000. Later that year, Tobin's wife was hired by the NRSC as a consultant on the unsuccessful re-election campaign of Rhode Island
senator Lincoln Chafee
, as Northeast Strategies, a company that listed the Tobins' home as its main address. Despite her lack of any previous experience, she was paid at $300,000.
On August 28, Marshall reported that two Indian tribes
, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians
and the Mississippi Choctaw
, known clients of influential lobbyist Jack Abramoff
, himself at the center of a widening scandal, had made $5,000 contributions (the legal maximum) to the NHGOP the week of the election in 2002. Neither was known to have any interest in New Hampshire. Later, staffers for Judd Gregg
, New Hampshire's senior senator and also a Republican, explained that they had passed along the checks without his knowledge.
Also unusual was over $600,000 contributed to the Sununu campaign over the final week by the National Republican Congressional Committee
, which normally focuses on races in the House and had not shown much interest in previous campaigns by Sununu. Texas congressman and former House majority leader Tom DeLay
's Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (ARMPAC) also contributed $5,000.
On November 10, Judge Steven McAuliffe denied Tobin's last motion to dismiss the conspiracy charges against him, although he said he would consider another motion to dismiss charges that Tobin denied others their right to vote.
Shortly before the trial started, Marshall reported that the state's witness list included Terry Nelson
, former political director for the Bush campaign. Nelson had been linked to the scandal involving DeLay's illegal fundraising in Texas.
s.
McGee's testimony suggested that the DCI Group
, a powerful public relations
firm which publishes the Tech Central Station website and is closely connected to the Republican party, was involved through lawyer and New Hampshire native Brian McCabe. He also said he had talked to Darrell Henry of the American Gas Association
, who said that he would keep the phone jamming going after it was officially called off. Henry, McGee said, had offered to keep the operation going with some volunteers from "the chamber". Since Tobin's superior at the NRSC, Chris LaCivita
, worked at the time for the United States Chamber of Commerce
, it is possible that he, too, had foreknowledge of the plan. He currently works for Terry Nelson's consulting firm, Crosslink Strategy Group.
Raymond said he'd also run the idea past Kenneth Gross, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Elections Commission, currently a partner in the powerful firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
.
On December 8, Tobin's defense presented two witnesses and rested. They persuaded McAuliffe to drop one charge and narrow the scope of another.
It would be of no avail; a week later the jury convicted him of two counts related to telephone harassment while acquitting him of the more serious charge of conspiracy to violate voters' rights.
In May 2006, prosecutors asked for a two-year prison sentence. They cited three factors: Tobin's abuse of a public and private trust, the making of multiple calls to multiple victims over a prolonged period of time, and the ultimate purpose of interfering with an election. The first two are specifically addressed by the telephone-harassment statute; the latter is not but, the prosecutors said, so egregious an end that it warranted more severe punishment. On May 17, 2006 Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
The trial left the New Hampshire Republican Party nearly bankrupt
, with only $733.60 in its bank account. Later that year, Democratic candidates upset both of the state's incumbent Republican congressmen.
On March 20, 2007, Chief Judge Michael Boudin
of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in Boston ruled that the statute under which Tobin was convicted "is not a close fit" for what Tobin did, and questioned whether the government showed that Tobin intended to harass. However, it did not void the conviction entirely as Tobin's lawyers sought, saying that conspiracy
jurisprudence did not require the level of proof Tobin claimed it did. It remanded it to district court for retrial, believing that a properly instructed jury could possibly return a conviction on the basis of his actions alone. Federal prosecutors said they were reviewing the decision to consider whether to appeal it in turn, or retry.
their 2002 race, which Shaheen won. These subsequent charges were summarily dismissed in 2009 after the federal judge in Maine's District Court found them motivated by 'vindictive prosecution.'
, was nominated for a federal judgeship by President Bush in January 2006.
Also that month, the NHGOP filed a countersuit against the state's Democratic Party, alleging that the Democratic lawsuit against them was merely part of a national effort to advance the party's interests in an election year and that the Democrats were abusing the court process to hinder NHGOP's efforts to engage in constitutionally protected political activities. On December 1, the two parties settled
for a total of $125,000, payable by the Republicans to the Democrats, in $25,000 annual installments over the next five years. The RNC and NRSC will also each make two $5,000 contributions to charities associated with the Manchester fire and police departments.
Charles McGee served seven months in prison, and now works at campaign school for GOP candidates, run by a Republican political marketing firm.
Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, that office was headed by Ken Mehlman
, who later became the chair of the Republican National Committee. The White House has declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.
The national Republican Party, which has continued to pay millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the phone calls involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming. Mehlman said that the calls were simply part of the many he and his assistant made to field operatives in competitive races all over the country during that time period.
Later in April, the state Democratic Party asked Phillip Mangones, the judge presiding over its lawsuit against NHGOP, to allow them to question Mehlman. An activist said Mehlman's explanation that it was routine election-day campaign business is hard to reconcile with records showing Tobin continued to call Mehlman's office long after the election was decided in Sununu's favor. Republican consultant Joe Gaylord accused the Democrats of "trying to stir up crap."
reported that Haley Barbour
, the former RNC chair now serving as governor
of Mississippi
, had provided a $250,000 startup loan to GOP Marketplace through his investment company, HELM Partners, in 2000. While he claimed that his involvement ended there and that he had no idea at the time that the company would ever engage in criminal activity, its operating agreement shows that HELM retained a great deal of control over the company through a different class of stock and that Barbour's partner Ed Rogers had, as a result, equal control of the company with Raymond. Further investigations showed that HELM had only been incorporated
shortly before GOP Marketplace was started and that the partnership
never invested in any other company. Raymond also owned two-thirds of the company despite his initial investment of only $11,700.
Unlike Tobin, Hansen's defense has not been paid for by any entities associated with the Republican Party. Instead, he is currently being represented by the federal public defender
's office. The listing of possible defenses he might employ, as listed in his first filing, suggests he may have been led to believe, by Tobin and others, that the jamming was perfectly legal.
He pled guilty and is due to be sentenced in February 2007. Later he withdrew the guilty plea and sentencing was postponed until May 2008.
The charges against Hansen were ultimately dismissed by the government.
(Dem, Michigan) sent a formal request to U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales
, asking him to name a special prosecutor
to investigate the 2002 phone-jamming. Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said an independent counsel is necessary to investigate allegations that White House
officials may have been involved in the scheme, pointing out that the US Department of Justice "appears not to be reviewing the extensive contacts between the plotters of the phone jamming and high-level Republican officials."
Telemarketing
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call.Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches...
firm hired by that state's Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
(NHGOP) for election tampering. The tampering involved using a call center to jam the phone lines of a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) operation. In the end, 900 calls were made for 45 minutes of disruption to the Democratic-leaning call centers.
During that state's 2002 election
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...
for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert C. Smith
Robert C. Smith
Robert C. "Bob" Smith is an American politician who has served in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life:Smith was born in Trenton, New Jersey...
, the NHGOP hired GOP Marketplace, based in Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia consists of several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia, in a widespread region generally radiating southerly and westward from Washington, D.C...
, to jam another phone bank being used by the state Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
and the firefighter
Firefighter
Firefighters are rescuers extensively trained primarily to put out hazardous fires that threaten civilian populations and property, to rescue people from car incidents, collapsed and burning buildings and other such situations...
s' union for efforts to turn out voters on behalf of then-governor
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
Jeanne Shaheen
Jeanne Shaheen
Jeanne Shaheen is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and the Senior United States Senator from New Hampshire. The first woman in U.S. history to be elected as both a Governor and U.S. Senator, she was the first woman to be elected Governor of New Hampshire, serving from...
on Election Day
Election Day (politics)
Election Day refers to the day when general elections are held. In many countries, general elections are always held on a Sunday, to enable as many voters as possible to participate, while in other countries elections are always held on a weekday...
. John E. Sununu
John E. Sununu
John Edward Sununu is a former Republican United States Senator from New Hampshire, of Lebanese and Palestinian Christian ancestry. Sununu was the youngest member of the Senate for his entire six year term. He is the son of former New Hampshire Governor John H...
, the Republican candidate, won a narrow victory. In addition to criminal prosecutions, disclosures in the case have come from a civil suit filed by the state's Democratic Party against the state's Republican Party (now settled).
Four men have been convicted of, or pled guilty to, federal crimes and sentenced to prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
for their involvement . One conviction has been reversed by an appeals court, a decision prosecutors are appealing. James Tobin
James Tobin (political operative)
James Tobin was President George W. Bush's New England campaign chairman. He was convicted on December 15, 2005, of telephone harassment "for his part in a plot to jam the Democratic Party's phones on Election Day 2002"...
, freed on appeal, was later indicted on charges of lying to the FBI during the original investigation.
The scandal breaks
Police in ConcordConcord, New Hampshire
The city of Concord is the capital of the state of New Hampshire in the United States. It is also the county seat of Merrimack County. As of the 2010 census, its population was 42,695....
, the state capital, were notified by Democratic workers on the day of the election that they were receiving repeated telephone calls, terminating after five seconds, which were interfering with their efforts to reach voters and offer rides to the polls. For at least an hour and a half at midday they were unable to make any outgoing calls. Verizon was later able to stop most of these calls, but whoever had made them had violated state laws against telephone harassment.
State authorities found the calls came from out of state, and so brought in their federal counterparts. They were eventually traced to Mylo Enterprises, a Pocatello
Pocatello, Idaho
Pocatello is the county seat and largest city of Bannock County, with a small portion on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in neighboring Power County, in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. It is the principal city of the Pocatello metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Bannock...
, Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
-based company that ran phone banks.
The New Hampshire Union Leader
New Hampshire Union Leader
The New Hampshire Union Leader is the daily newspaper of Manchester, the largest city in the state of New Hampshire. As of September 2010 it had a daily circulation of 48,342 and the circulation of its Sunday paper, the New Hampshire Sunday News, was 63,991. It was founded in 1863.It was called...
reported on it February 8, 2003. The story forced the resignation of state GOP executive director Charles McGee shortly afterward, when he admitted lying to the paper. Later, prosecutors said that he had come up with the idea of disrupting Democratic communications after seeing a flyer put out by the Shaheen campaign with the numbers. Drawing on his military background, he decided to disrupt "enemy communications" and called several telemarketing
Telemarketing
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call.Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches...
firms he knew to have Republican sympathies. However, none of them wanted anything to do with the idea.
However, James Tobin
James Tobin (political operative)
James Tobin was President George W. Bush's New England campaign chairman. He was convicted on December 15, 2005, of telephone harassment "for his part in a plot to jam the Democratic Party's phones on Election Day 2002"...
, then Northeast
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...
field director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee
National Republican Senatorial Committee
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is the Republican Hill committee for the United States Senate, working to elect Republicans to that body. The NRSC was founded in 1916 as the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee...
(NRSC), put McGee in touch with GOP Marketplace, a Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia consists of several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia, in a widespread region generally radiating southerly and westward from Washington, D.C...
firm run by Allen Raymond
Allen Raymond
Allen Raymond is a Republican political consultant in the United States who spent three months in federal prison for his role in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, for which he was convicted of making harassing phone calls across state lines, a felony.Raymond told...
, which had been hired by the New Hampshire party for similar voter-turnout efforts. McGee had lied in claiming to be unaware of this.
Steve Kornacki of politicsnj.com discovered that Raymond, a New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
native, had worked for James Treffinger, a former gubernatorial candidate then under indictment
Indictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...
for a phone scandal during that state's 2001 Republican primary
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
for the senatorial nomination in which calls were made smearing two of his opponents. A prominent figure in that indictment, possibly a co-conspirator, was an unnamed Republican consultant believed to be Raymond (during the later trial of James Tobin, the prosecution said that GOP Marketplace had worked for a Senate campaign in New Jersey and that that work had led to a criminal indictment). During the 2002 Super Bowl
Super Bowl XXXVI
Super Bowl XXXVI was an American football game played on February 3, 2002 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana to decide the National Football League champion following the 2001 regular season. The American Football Conference champion New England Patriots won their first Super...
, Raymond's firm had placed calls to prospective voters that not only attacked one of Treffinger's rivals but purported to be from another.
New Hampshire Republicans were initially angry and demanded not only an investigation, but a refund of the $15,600 they paid GOP Marketplace. Two weeks later, however, McGee's replacement, Jayne Millerick, dropped the request.
Guilty pleas
Little was heard about the case until June 30, 2004, when Allen RaymondAllen Raymond
Allen Raymond is a Republican political consultant in the United States who spent three months in federal prison for his role in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, for which he was convicted of making harassing phone calls across state lines, a felony.Raymond told...
pled guilty to several felony charges in federal court in Concord. McGee followed suit the next month. Joshua Micah Marshall's blog noted that Todd Hinnen, the prosecutor in Raymond's case, indicated to the court that Raymond had been contacted about the phone jamming idea by "a former colleague who was then an official in a national political organization." Later on that month, both he and the Union Leader reported that this unnamed third individual had a significant role in the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign.
In an op-ed for the Concord Monitor
Concord Monitor
The Concord Monitor is the daily newspaper for Concord, the state capital of New Hampshire. It also covers substantial portions of surrounding Merrimack and Belknap counties in New Hampshire's Lakes Region...
, Smith called the phone-jamming "an outrage" and deplored the lack of Republican anger over "this despicable action by pathetic political hacks." He also implied that the phone jamming may have denied Shaheen victory.
The third man
In October, an affidavit filed by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and released to the media contained information that made it possible to identify the third man as Tobin, then serving as the New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
regional director for the Bush campaign. He resigned October 15, and was indicted December 1, then arraigned December 13 on two criminal counts each of conspiring to make harassing telephone calls and aiding and abetting telephone harassment.
Sentences
Allen RaymondAllen Raymond
Allen Raymond is a Republican political consultant in the United States who spent three months in federal prison for his role in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, for which he was convicted of making harassing phone calls across state lines, a felony.Raymond told...
was sentenced to five months in federal prison on February 8, 2005, for his role. A month later, Charles McGee received seven months. James Tobin
James Tobin (political operative)
James Tobin was President George W. Bush's New England campaign chairman. He was convicted on December 15, 2005, of telephone harassment "for his part in a plot to jam the Democratic Party's phones on Election Day 2002"...
refused to cooperate with investigators as his trial approached. During Tobin's trial, questions arose about the source of the money involved in funding the phone jamming and his defense.
In July, the Union Leader reported that one of Tobin's attorneys told the court he was representing the defendant in his capacity as an employee of the Republican National Committee
Republican National Committee
The Republican National Committee is an American political committee that provides national leadership for the Republican Party of the United States. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. It is...
(RNC). Since the RNC had stated that Tobin was acting on his own in a rogue operation, it was asked, why would they be paying for his defense?
In August, the RNC finally confirmed that it had spent more than $722,000 for Tobin's defense by the Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
firm of Williams & Connolly
Williams & Connolly
Williams & Connolly LLP is a prominent litigation firm based in Washington, D.C. The firm was founded by trial lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, who left the partnership of D.C. firm Hogan & Hartson to launch his own litigation boutique....
. "This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing," a spokesperson told the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
.
The Union Leader reported in February 2006 that the RNC had paid $1.7 million to Williams on the day Tobin was sentenced, for a total of $2.5 million, and would neither confirm nor deny that it was still paying his legal expenses. The RNC's first financial report of 2006 indicated that it by then spent another $330,000. Later that year, Tobin's wife was hired by the NRSC as a consultant on the unsuccessful re-election campaign of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
senator Lincoln Chafee
Lincoln Chafee
Lincoln Davenport Chafee is an American politician who has been the 74th Governor of Rhode Island since January 2011. Prior to his election as governor, Chafee served in the United States Senate as a Republican from 1999 until losing his Senate re-election bid in 2006 to Democrat Sheldon...
, as Northeast Strategies, a company that listed the Tobins' home as its main address. Despite her lack of any previous experience, she was paid at $300,000.
On August 28, Marshall reported that two Indian tribes
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
and the Mississippi Choctaw
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
, known clients of influential lobbyist Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff is an American former lobbyist and businessman. Convicted in 2006 of mail fraud and conspiracy, he was at the heart of an extensive corruption investigation that led to the conviction of White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine...
, himself at the center of a widening scandal, had made $5,000 contributions (the legal maximum) to the NHGOP the week of the election in 2002. Neither was known to have any interest in New Hampshire. Later, staffers for Judd Gregg
Judd Gregg
Judd Alan Gregg is a former Governor of New Hampshire and former United States Senator from New Hampshire, who served as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He is a member of the Republican Party and was a businessman and attorney in Nashua before entering politics...
, New Hampshire's senior senator and also a Republican, explained that they had passed along the checks without his knowledge.
Also unusual was over $600,000 contributed to the Sununu campaign over the final week by the National Republican Congressional Committee
National Republican Congressional Committee
The National Republican Congressional Committee is the Republican Hill committee which works to elect Republicans to the United States House of Representatives....
, which normally focuses on races in the House and had not shown much interest in previous campaigns by Sununu. Texas congressman and former House majority leader Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
's Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (ARMPAC) also contributed $5,000.
On November 10, Judge Steven McAuliffe denied Tobin's last motion to dismiss the conspiracy charges against him, although he said he would consider another motion to dismiss charges that Tobin denied others their right to vote.
Shortly before the trial started, Marshall reported that the state's witness list included Terry Nelson
Terry Nelson
Terry A. Nelson is a consultant and Republican strategist in the United States. He was the political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign...
, former political director for the Bush campaign. Nelson had been linked to the scandal involving DeLay's illegal fundraising in Texas.
Trial of James Tobin
Tobin's trial began on December 6, 2005. The first day apparently went well for the defense, when key prosecution witness Chuck McGee seemed to back away from testimony he had agreed to make in exchange for plea bargainPlea bargain
A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence.A plea bargain allows criminal defendants to...
s.
McGee's testimony suggested that the DCI Group
DCI Group
DCI Group is an American public relations, lobbying and business consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. The company was founded in 1996 as a grassroots consulting firm, and has since expanded its practice to become a public affairs company offering a range of services...
, a powerful public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
firm which publishes the Tech Central Station website and is closely connected to the Republican party, was involved through lawyer and New Hampshire native Brian McCabe. He also said he had talked to Darrell Henry of the American Gas Association
American Gas Association
The American Gas Association , founded in 1918, is an American trade organization representing natural gas supply companies and others with an interest in the manufacturing of gas appliances as well as the production of gas...
, who said that he would keep the phone jamming going after it was officially called off. Henry, McGee said, had offered to keep the operation going with some volunteers from "the chamber". Since Tobin's superior at the NRSC, Chris LaCivita
Chris LaCivita
Christopher J. LaCivita is an American political consultant, and president of the firm Advancing Strategies LLC. He was formerly with Crosslink Strategy, a conservative lobbying and political consulting firm founded by former John McCain advisor Terry Nelson...
, worked at the time for the United States Chamber of Commerce
United States Chamber of Commerce
The United States Chamber of Commerce is an American lobbying group representing the interests of many businesses and trade associations. It is not an agency of the United States government....
, it is possible that he, too, had foreknowledge of the plan. He currently works for Terry Nelson's consulting firm, Crosslink Strategy Group.
Raymond said he'd also run the idea past Kenneth Gross, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Elections Commission, currently a partner in the powerful firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates , founded in 1948, is a prominent law firm based in New York City. With over 2,000 attorneys, it is one of the largest and highest-grossing law firms in the world. Forbes magazine calls Skadden "Wall Street's most powerful law firm"...
.
On December 8, Tobin's defense presented two witnesses and rested. They persuaded McAuliffe to drop one charge and narrow the scope of another.
It would be of no avail; a week later the jury convicted him of two counts related to telephone harassment while acquitting him of the more serious charge of conspiracy to violate voters' rights.
In May 2006, prosecutors asked for a two-year prison sentence. They cited three factors: Tobin's abuse of a public and private trust, the making of multiple calls to multiple victims over a prolonged period of time, and the ultimate purpose of interfering with an election. The first two are specifically addressed by the telephone-harassment statute; the latter is not but, the prosecutors said, so egregious an end that it warranted more severe punishment. On May 17, 2006 Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
The trial left the New Hampshire Republican Party nearly bankrupt
Bankruptcy in the United States
Bankruptcy in the United States is governed under the United States Constitution which authorizes Congress to enact "uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States." Congress has exercised this authority several times since 1801, most recently by adopting the Bankruptcy...
, with only $733.60 in its bank account. Later that year, Democratic candidates upset both of the state's incumbent Republican congressmen.
Conviction reversed on appeal
On December 21, Tobin's lawyers filed documents in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H. seeking to vacate the jury's verdict and demanding a new trial for Tobin. A month later, a more detailed filing laid out three possible errors:- McGee and Raymond went ahead with the plan after talking with Tobin, not before, suggesting it was their decision alone.
- Tobin cannot be shown to have assented to the element of the plan that called for repeated hangup calls.
- There was no evidence of an agreement to proceed before McGee consulted the NHGOP chair and Raymond sought an attorney's advice.
- All the trial evidence showed was that Tobin referred McGee to Raymond.
On March 20, 2007, Chief Judge Michael Boudin
Michael Boudin
Michael Boudin is a Judge and former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.Boudin was born in New York City, the son of the civil liberties attorney Leonard Boudin and older brother of Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin. He received a B.A. from Harvard...
of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Maine* District of Massachusetts...
in Boston ruled that the statute under which Tobin was convicted "is not a close fit" for what Tobin did, and questioned whether the government showed that Tobin intended to harass. However, it did not void the conviction entirely as Tobin's lawyers sought, saying that conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
jurisprudence did not require the level of proof Tobin claimed it did. It remanded it to district court for retrial, believing that a properly instructed jury could possibly return a conviction on the basis of his actions alone. Federal prosecutors said they were reviewing the decision to consider whether to appeal it in turn, or retry.
2008 Tobin indictment
After over a year of no further legal or investigative developments, on October 9, 2008, a federal grand jury in Maine indicted Tobin anew on two counts of making false statements to FBI agents. At that time Shaheen and Sununu were reprisingUnited States Senate election in New Hampshire, 2008
The United States Senate election in New Hampshire was held on November 4, 2008. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator John E. Sununu ran for re-election to a second term, but was defeated by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.- Background :...
their 2002 race, which Shaheen won. These subsequent charges were summarily dismissed in 2009 after the federal judge in Maine's District Court found them motivated by 'vindictive prosecution.'
Other developments
Noel Hillman, who was credited with moving the case to trial as head of the Justice Department's Public Integrity SectionPublic Integrity Section
The Public Integrity Section is a section of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice charged with combating political corruption at all levels of government through the prosecution of corrupt federal, state, and local elected and appointed public officials.-Administrative...
, was nominated for a federal judgeship by President Bush in January 2006.
Also that month, the NHGOP filed a countersuit against the state's Democratic Party, alleging that the Democratic lawsuit against them was merely part of a national effort to advance the party's interests in an election year and that the Democrats were abusing the court process to hinder NHGOP's efforts to engage in constitutionally protected political activities. On December 1, the two parties settled
Settlement (law)
In law, a settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. The term "settlement" also has other meanings in the context of law.-Basis:...
for a total of $125,000, payable by the Republicans to the Democrats, in $25,000 annual installments over the next five years. The RNC and NRSC will also each make two $5,000 contributions to charities associated with the Manchester fire and police departments.
Charles McGee served seven months in prison, and now works at campaign school for GOP candidates, run by a Republican political marketing firm.
White House connections
A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls to the White House between September 17 and November 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting, a three-day period during which the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out, and then abruptly shut down.Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, that office was headed by Ken Mehlman
Ken Mehlman
Kenneth Brian Mehlman is an American businessman, attorney, and political figure who served as the campaign manager for the 2004 re-election campaign of George W. Bush and Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, President Bush appointed Mehlman to the U.S...
, who later became the chair of the Republican National Committee. The White House has declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.
The national Republican Party, which has continued to pay millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the phone calls involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming. Mehlman said that the calls were simply part of the many he and his assistant made to field operatives in competitive races all over the country during that time period.
Later in April, the state Democratic Party asked Phillip Mangones, the judge presiding over its lawsuit against NHGOP, to allow them to question Mehlman. An activist said Mehlman's explanation that it was routine election-day campaign business is hard to reconcile with records showing Tobin continued to call Mehlman's office long after the election was decided in Sununu's favor. Republican consultant Joe Gaylord accused the Democrats of "trying to stir up crap."
Haley Barbour connection
On April 28, the Associated PressAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that Haley Barbour
Haley Barbour
Haley Reeves Barbour is an American Republican politician currently serving as the 63rd Governor of Mississippi. He gained a national spotlight in August 2005 after Mississippi was hit by Hurricane Katrina. Barbour won re-election as Governor in 2007...
, the former RNC chair now serving as governor
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
of Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, had provided a $250,000 startup loan to GOP Marketplace through his investment company, HELM Partners, in 2000. While he claimed that his involvement ended there and that he had no idea at the time that the company would ever engage in criminal activity, its operating agreement shows that HELM retained a great deal of control over the company through a different class of stock and that Barbour's partner Ed Rogers had, as a result, equal control of the company with Raymond. Further investigations showed that HELM had only been incorporated
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
shortly before GOP Marketplace was started and that the partnership
Partnership
A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.Since humans are social beings, partnerships between individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments, and varied combinations thereof, have always been and remain commonplace...
never invested in any other company. Raymond also owned two-thirds of the company despite his initial investment of only $11,700.
Shaun Hansen
On March 27, 2006, Shaun Hansen, the former owner of Mylo, traveled from Idaho to New Hampshire to face one count each of conspiracy to commit telephone harassment and aiding and abetting telephone harassment. Prosecutors allege that he agreed to use his firm to jam six phone numbers with hangup calls on the day of the election for $2,500.Unlike Tobin, Hansen's defense has not been paid for by any entities associated with the Republican Party. Instead, he is currently being represented by the federal public defender
Public defender
The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...
's office. The listing of possible defenses he might employ, as listed in his first filing, suggests he may have been led to believe, by Tobin and others, that the jamming was perfectly legal.
He pled guilty and is due to be sentenced in February 2007. Later he withdrew the guilty plea and sentencing was postponed until May 2008.
The charges against Hansen were ultimately dismissed by the government.
Special prosecutor sought
On May 12, 2006, U.S. Rep John ConyersJohn Conyers
John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...
(Dem, Michigan) sent a formal request to U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales
Alberto R. Gonzales was the 80th Attorney General of the United States. Gonzales was appointed to the post in February 2005 by President George W. Bush. Gonzales was the first Hispanic Attorney General in U.S. history and the highest-ranking Hispanic government official ever...
, asking him to name a special prosecutor
Special prosecutor
A special prosecutor generally is a lawyer from outside the government appointed by an attorney general or, in the United States, by Congress to investigate a government official for misconduct while in office. A reasoning for such an appointment is that the governmental branch or agency may have...
to investigate the 2002 phone-jamming. Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said an independent counsel is necessary to investigate allegations that White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
officials may have been involved in the scheme, pointing out that the US Department of Justice "appears not to be reviewing the extensive contacts between the plotters of the phone jamming and high-level Republican officials."
External links
- 2002 Election NH "Phone Jamming" Case on SourceWatchSourceWatchSourceWatch is an internet wiki site that is a collaborative project of the liberal Center for Media and Democracy...
- How High Did It Go?
- Did White House help jam phone calls in election?
- Liberal group files Abramoff complaint in New Hampshire
- Phonegate: Jamming Democrats' Campaign Efforts
- Phone-jamming civil suit is settled