Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Republicans paid telemarketers to jam the phones of NH Democrats on Election Day, 2002. We might never have heard a word about any of this, except that one of the rides-to-the-polls phones jammed was that the Manchester, NH Firefighters’ Union. The Manchester, NH Police started pushing for answer–who had done this and why? After several months of being stonewalled, the police asked the Feds to step in–and this story broke, for the first time, in the Manchester Union Leader in February of 2003.

Below is a sample from the official transcript of James Tobin’s trial for December 7. Sworn testimony from phone-jammer Chuck McGee reveals that the FBI never contacted him on the matter until August of 2003. Having contacted him in August, they finally got around to interviewing him in December of 2003, more than a year after the events occurred.*

All the perpetrators, having known since February of 2003 that they would be questioned, made full use of this delay to have foggy memories of who said what to whom. In fact, in the excerpt from Chuck McGee’s testimony, you can see that his memory has gotten quite a bit worse between December 6 and December 7 of 2005. Things that were clear in McGee’s Grand Jury testimony are now such a hazy memory that the US Attorney has given him a printout of his Grand Jury testimony to refresh his memory. And “Elisha” (almost surely Alicia) Davis makes a cameo appearance…

---

2 Q. [US Attorney Andrew Levchuk] Well, you’ve testified that you told him you
3 wanted to jam phone numbers, you said yesterday, or you
4 wanted to disrupt communications.
5 A. [Chuck McGee] I’m trying to tell it as best I remember, Mr.
6 Levchuk. I’m sure — you know, I don’t know if I used
7 the word “dems,” “democrats,” “them,” “the other side.”
8 Q. In other words, it was not the Daughters of
9 the American Revolution whose phones you wanted to
10 disrupt.
11 A. Correct.
12 Q. And you made that clear to Mr. Tobin, didn’t
13 you?
14 A. I’m fairly certain today that I did.
15 Q. And instead of dissuading you, Tobin helps you
16 find a guy who can do this for you?
17 A. He gives me a name and number.
18 Q. And he says in sum or substance this is a guy
19 who can help you?
20 A. I presume that’s what he meant since he gave
21 me the name and number.
22 Q. Well, your testimony yesterday and in the
23 grand jury was that he said it; correct?
24 A. Okay. It’s three years ago. I’m trying to
25 remember it as best I can.

55

1 Q. Well, you said the grand jury was closer in
2 time; correct?
3 A. Correct.
4 Q. And in the grand jury isn’t it true you
5 testified that the page you just looked at, they said
6 this is someone who can help you, who can help you out?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. At any point does the topic of a lawyer come
9 up in your discussion with Jim Tobin?
10 A. No.
11 Q. So never does legal counsel, a lawyer, come up
12 in your discussion with Jim Tobin?
13 A. No. Again, the conversation was very brief.
14 I just asked Jim if he knew somebody. He gave me a name
15 and a number.
16 Q. I asked you a yes or no question. Lawyer
17 didn’t come up, did it?
18 A. Sorry. No, lawyer did not come up.
19 MR. LEVCHUK: And if I can just take a second,
20 your Honor.
21 Q. You had I think first talked to Cathy Fuller,
22 special agent of the FBI, back in December of 2003; is
23 that correct?
24 A. I believe she first called my home in August
25 of 2003.

56

1 Q. There was a conversation with her, interview
2 or proffer, if you will, at some point that year?
3 A. December.
4 Q. And during that isn’t it true you referred to
5 Jim Tobin as your lifeline to the White House?
6 A. I can’t recall those words at this time.
7 Q. But would that be accurate to say, that Jim
8 Tobin was your lifeline to the White House, if you will?
9 A. I don’t know if — he would have been a person
10 that we could have contacted to help us communicate with
11 the White House, but we also had a lady by the name of
12 Elisha Davis who was a contact of the White House.

---

Update: Hurray for NH! The Portsmouth (NH) Editorial today asks some very good questions:

Is it too much to ask for Sen. Sununu [whose election benefited from the phone-jamming] to call for full and absolute disclosure? Or the same from Sen. Judd Gregg, his Republican colleague who also represents us?

Is it too much to ask the White House and the RNC to do what they can to resolve remaining questions?

Is it too much to ask that the national press get interested in why this case is worth the millions of dollars the RNC is paying lawyers to keep it hushed up?

---

*Correction: Chuck McGee was charged in early July of 2004 and pled guilty on July 28. He gave testimony to the Grand Jury on July 28, 2004 in support of his plea agreement with the government. Therefore my inference above that nobody talked to him before August was mistaken.. The December 2003 interview with the FBI came more than a year after the November 5, 2002, phone-jamming, and more than six months before McGee was charged for his role in that crime.

After the plea agreement, however, severe problems cropped up between McGee and the prosecutors. McGee decided to serve his 7-month prison sentence at once, cutting off the possibility of having it reduced for future testimony. He asked the Feds for help, however, in being able to serve his sentence near home, where his family could visit, in a minimum-security prison. The feds, however, did not persuade the Bureau of Prisons on this, which then chose to send McGee to a maximum-security prison in Brooklyn, NY. Not surprisingly, McGee feels that the government treated him badly.

---