From Allen Raymond’s testimony under oath on December 7, 2005, starting on page 103 of the official transcript:
13 Q. [US Attorney Nicholas Marsh] Mr. Raymond, did you — do you remember having
14 any telephone conversations with Mr. Tobin on Election
15 Day?
16 A. [Allen Raymond] Yes, I do. I recall a conversation on
17 Election Day with Mr. Tobin.
18 Q. Do you remember when you talked to Mr. Tobin
19 on Election Day?
20 A. I believe it was late afternoon.
21 Q. And why did you talk to Mr. Tobin that day?
22 A. I spoke with Mr. Tobin specifically about the
23 New Hampshire project and what he knew about why it had
24 been stopped.
25 Q. Why did you call Mr. Tobin to talk about that?104
1 A. Because, again, it was an unusual program. It
2 was — being stopped in the nature that it was was also
3 very unusual, and I thought that he might have some
4 insight as to why it was stopped.
5 Q. So after you tell Mr. Tobin that, what, if
6 anything, does he say to you?
7 A. He tells me that the chairman wanted it
8 stopped.
9 Q. And by chairman who do you mean?
10 A. Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State
11 Committee.
12 Q. Do you remember anything else that you and Mr.
13 Tobin talked about in that telephone call?
14 A. No. I believe that’s what we talked about,
15 the reason for the program being stopped.
16 Q. Mr. Raymond, do you remember speaking to Mr.
17 Tobin at any point the rest of Election Day?
18 A. No, I do not.
19 Q. Now I’d like to go back to the $15,600 payment
20 that you talked about from the state committee. Did you
21 ever receive that payment?
22 A. Yes, we did.
23 Q. When did you receive it?
24 A. On Election Day, November 5th, 2002.
25 Q. Sir, this is Exhibit 4 again. I’d like for105
1 you to take a look at the second page of it when it
2 comes up. Do you recognize this?
3 A. I do.
4 Q. What is it?
5 A. That’s the check that we received from the New
6 Hampshire Republican State Committee.
7 Q. And after you received it, what’d you do with
8 it?
9 A. I processed it like I process all checks from
10 clients.
11 Q. We’re pulling up page three of Exhibit No. 4,.
12 Blowing it up. Mr. Raymond, do you recognize this
13 document?
14 A. I do. It’s a deposit slip. So what I will do
15 is generally after receiving a check, I make a photocopy
16 of the check. I make out a deposit slip. I take both
17 down to the bank and deposit the check, return to the
18 office and make a photocopy of the deposit slip, put the
19 copy of the deposit slip and the copy of the check with
20 the invoice, and put the invoice in a folder called
21 accounts receivable paid.
22 Q. Sir, Election Day comes and goes. After
23 Election Day did you ever talk to Mr. Tobin again about
24 this phone jamming scheme?
25 A. Yes.106
1 Q. When do you remember first talking to him
2 again about this scheme?
3 A. It would have been Wednesday after election.
4 Q. Tell us why you speak with Mr. Tobin that day?
5 A. My recollection is that I had a voice message
6 from him from the previous day and so that I was
7 returning his call.
8 Q. And when you returned the call to Mr. Tobin on
9 Wednesday, November 6th, what did you talk about?
10 A. We talked about the New Hampshire situation,
11 and most notably what he told me was that the check that
12 I had received and cashed had been forged.
13 Q. Did he tell you any more specifics about other
14 than he thought it had been forged?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Did he tell you any reason or did he describe
17 how he knew that the check had been forged?
18 A. He did not share that with me.
19 Q. How did you react to hearing that information?
20 A. I was concerned, but I wasn’t overall alarmed.
21 Having worked at a state party, I understand that
22 sometimes — sometimes the executive director is the
23 signatory on the account and sometimes they are not.
24 When they are not, sometimes it’s common practice for
25 the chairman to direct someone to sign the check simply107
1 because he’s not nearby to sign the check and a bill
2 needs to be paid. So I was alarmed to some degree
3 because I had deposited it, and he was expressly telling
4 me that it was a forged check. But on the other hand, I
5 wasn’t too overwhelmed by it simply because it was
6 fairly common practice for others to sign checks at
7 state parties.
8 Q. Sir, after that conversation on November 6th,
9 did you and Mr. Tobin ever talk at some later point
10 about the phone jamming scheme?
11 A. One more time.
12 Q. When was that?
13 A. That was in middle or late November of that
14 year.
15 Q. Why did you reach out to Mr. Tobin at that
16 time?
17 A. I reached out to Mr. Tobin because I had
18 received a phone call from Lieutenant Roach of the
19 Manchester Police Department, and Mr. Roach —
20 Lieutenant Roach had asked us if we had done this
21 program and I told him that we had. He responded to me
22 by saying that there was nothing he could do about it,
23 but that I should be more careful next time and not do
24 it again.
25 Q. After you receive this call from the police,108
1 why do you call Mr. Tobin?
2 A. Again, it’s an unusual call. I’ve never
3 received a phone call from law enforcement of any kind
4 on a phone program that we had conducted. So I called
5 Mr. Tobin simply to let him know that we had received
6 the phone call.
7 Q. And did you tell Mr. Tobin that it was in the
8 context of the New Hampshire project that you had worked
9 on?
10 A. Yes, absolutely.
11 Q. And what did Mr. Tobin tell you?
12 A. Well, his first two responses were pretending
13 not to remember the program at all.
14 Q. So you tell Mr. Tobin, I’ve gotten this call
15 from the police about the New Hampshire phone jamming
16 scheme, and what does Mr. Tobin tell you?
17 A. He says, “What are you talking about?”
18 Q. So then what do you say?
19 A. I said, “The New Hampshire phone program that
20 we had done that you referred your state party to us
21 for,” and he said, “I don’t know what you are talking
22 about.”
23 Q. And then after that did you say anything back
24 to Mr. Tobin?
25 A. Yeah. I more or less called his bluff and109
1 said, “Jim, you do know what I’m talking about,” and at
2 that point he relented and acknowledged that he did.
3 Q. And did you discuss anything else in that
4 call?
5 A. No. That was pretty much the end of the call.
Did James Tobin conspire in the NH phone-jamming? His lawyers claimed he had only the vaguest idea of what was planned.
Suppose Tobin’s lawyers were telling the truth about this. What kind of conversations would you expect an innocent person to have with Allen Raymond once the phone-jamming had been stopped? Wouldn’t an innocent person be shocked or upset? Instead, James Tobin was quite matter-of-fact until the police came snooping around–at which point he tried, unsuccessfully, to claim he didn’t know bupkis.
Tobin’s lawyers worked hard to discredit Allen Raymond’s testimony, and very successfully undermined prosecutors’ claims of an October 18 phone call. But the post-phone-jamming conversations Raymond described also serve to tell us a lot about Mr. Tobin’s involvement in the plan.