In today’s Union Leader, veteran reporter John DiStaso smashes the Republican cover-up piece by piece.
The Republicans have claimed at various times:
- That they never hired GOP Marketplace.
- That they paid GOP Marketplace for get-out-the-vote calls.
- That they were demanding a refund from GOP Marketplace.“If we don’t get it back, you might see a theft of services charge,” said Republican leader Richard Kennedy .
Within the past few days, GOPMarketplace.com has disappeared from the web, replaced by a collection of “Access Denied” and “404-not found” pages. The phone still works, though, and DiStasio talked to the company’s attorney, who said that NH Republicans have made no effort to get back the $15,600 spent on phone-jamming.
When confronted by DiStasio, GOP State Chair Millerick explained “she hasn’t tried to get a refund since she’s been in office, preferring to ‘move forward’.”
The GOPMarketplace attorney John Partridge also says the firm hasn’t been contacted by any investigators–federal or state. If true, that makes the disappearance of their website even more strange.
And one more question. If no NH Republicans knew about the plan to block get-out-the-vote phone lines–how did Virginia-based GOP Marketplace or the Idaho-based phone bank get the phone number of the Manchester Firefighters’ Union?