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Interesting news about the phone-jamming scandal continues to emerge from court transcripts–and since major media continues to fail to cover it, I will continue to put new info online.
1) Defense attorney Dane Butswinkas mentioned that Chuck McGee started to look for vendors willing to phone-jam in early October. (I wonder if this reflects evidence given by NH telemarketing companies to McGee’s grand jury?) |
[Page 9, Line 6] … What we know
7 from the facts is that Mr. McGee started in early
8 October or even perhaps late September going around
9 trying to find vendors…
So it’s even more likely that phone-jamming was on the (lunch?) table on October 23, 2002, when Tobin’s expense account suggests that he met with McGee, gas lobbyist Darrell Henry, and NHRSC Chair John Dowd:*
2) Did James Tobin abuse his position of trust with the Republican Party? US Attorney Andrew Levchuk made the case that Tobin did. Judge McAuliffe’s viewpoint was more in line with the choice of the RNC to pay Tobin’s legal bills:
[Page 23, Line 10] [Judge McAuliffe] ..he didn’t abuse the trust placed in him by those who
11 place trust in him, the Republicans. He helped them.
12 That was his goal. He suppressed votes for the
13 opposition, and thereby in a zero-sum game sort of way
14 enhanced the votes cast for the Republicans. So he
15 didn’t abuse their trust.
16 MR. LEVCHUK: I would disagree with that, your
17 Honor, only because, as I mentioned, Special Agent
18 Fuller talked with both supervisors, the supervisor of
19 the Republican National Committee and at the National
20 Republican Senatorial Committee. Those supervisors made
21 clear that they didn’t know about this beforehand, and
22 at least implicitly, it’s not something that they would
23 have condoned. That was the message.
So the FBI did indeed question Tobin’s supervisor at the NRSC, Chris “Mr. Swift-Boating” LaCivita, who said he knew nothing about any phone-jamming. Although, to quote Mandy Rice-Davies, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
3) On a lighter note, and as a reminder that attorneys aren’t under oath when giving their own slant on the facts of a case, Tobin’s attorney laments the extensive media coverage of his client’s triat:
[Page 81 Line 9] … There have been, by our
10 count, over 500 articles about this case, about Mr.
11 Tobin, many of which are quite disparaging, some of
12 which refer to him as a terrorist.
A terrorist? Yes, and he had the footnote to prove it: two sarcastic blogposts described in his sentencing memo as “more than one site” comparing James Tobin to a terrorist.
Bloggers, it’s been a long wait–but I think we’re now being conflated with the press.
* Yet another indication that Chuck McGee started thinking about disrupting Democrats’ lines of communication much earlier than I had guessed, also from Dane Butswinkas:
[Page 82 line 7] …Exhibit 79 that the
8 defendants put into evidence was an internal e-mail at
9 the Republican Party from Jayne Millerick that went to
10 Mr. McGee and the people involved in the state party but
11 not to Mr. Tobin, and it’s on October 17, 2002, and it
12 makes reference to the disruption of the Republicans’
13 events by the Democrats. It says: As many of you may
14 already know, this year’s candidates and especially the
15 Sununu campaign have been enduring an increasing problem
16 with members of the opposition intercepting our
17 communications and disrupting events.
No, I don’t approve of anyone, Democrat or otherwise, who sets out to disrupt somebody’s campaign event. But is that quite the same thing as disrupting elections themselves?
Source: Official court document, USA v. James Tobin (CR.04-216-01-SM), Transcript of Sentencing Before the Honorable Steven J. McAuliffe, May 17, 2006, prepared by Court Reporter Diane M. Churas.