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

The slow-walk of justice for Republican wrongdoers has been setting some kind of a record in NH. Tiny blurb in Thursday’s Union Leader: A new trial for accused 2002 GOP phone jamming conspirator James Tobin is expected in either December or January. Tobin’s conviction on phone harassment and conspiracy charges was reversed by a federal appeals court in March and remanded to the trial court… Briefs will begin to be filed in September.

So–federal crime in November, 2002 as paid professional staffers for the NH Republican State Committee and the RNC conspire to jam Democrats’ phones on Election Day. Eventually, one FBI agent in Boston is told to look into this on a part-time basis, but instructed not to follow up on leads to Washington, DC because “other agents” will cover such leads. Such leads, if followed by anyone, yield no indictments, testimony, or the slightest evidence that other FBI agents worked on the case.

Wait two years

In 2004, James Tobin was serving as New England chair for the Bush/Cheney campaign when hints of his phone-jamming role leaked into the press. Conveniently, he was not indicted until December, 2004, more than two years after the phone-jamming. It took only a few days from Tobin’s indictment until millions of dollars from the RNC started flowing that month into payments for his defense lawyers. But…

Wait a year

… it took another year for the case to come to trial. Tobin was found guilty in December, 2005 by 12 NH jurors. And Tobin’s lawyers, within a few days, had transformed their hundreds of pages of objections into multiple appeals of Tobin’s conviction.

Wait a year

In January, 2007, a bizarre spectacle played out in Federal Appeals Court in Boston–watching it unfold, I predicted that Tobin’s conviction would be overturned–as it was, on very narrow procedural grounds, in March, 2007. The judgment clearly stated that Tobin could be re-tried.

Moving comparatively quickly, when events in March get some follow-up in July!

So now, it seems, in December 2007 or January 2008, NH will re-try Mr. Tobin. Will he finally take the stand and respond to some questions about the crime that took place more than five years in the past? Will the many links from Mr. Tobin to his bosses in Washington, DC get any exploration? Will the lonnnggg slow-walk of the phone-jamming case finally speed up now that a pardon from Bush would need to come before January of 2008?

Wait a few more months…

…and these questions will be answered.