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

I’ve been at work on a timeline of the NH phone-jamming scandal, trying to “follow the money” that flowed to and from friends of DeLay and Abramoff, as well as the ongoing payments from the RNC to defense lawyers for convicted felon James Tobin.

Here are a few highlights, but I’ll be backpaging the ongoing timeline work:

10/28/2002

NH Republican State Committee gets $10,000 from Abramoff clients.
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00136457/95264/sa/ALL

11/1/2002

NH Republican State Committee gets $5,000 from Tom DeLays’s ARMPAC.

11/4/2002

McGee signs a $15,600 NH Republican State Committee check to pay for phone-jamming.

11/5/2002

Election day phone-jamming plan unravels, and James Tobin makes two dozen phone calls to the White House office of public affairs between 11/4 and 2:17 a.m. on 11/7…

6/30/2004

Prosecutor Todd Hinnen discloses the involvement in phone-jamming of Allen Raymond’s “former colleague who was then an official in a national political organization.”

6/30/2004

James Tobin donation to Tom Delay (TX) $2,000 (More on Tobin’s donations to friends of DeLay and Abramoff.) …

10/14/2004

Democrats file motion that for the first time names James Tobin as the unidentified co-conspirator and alleges that the Justice Department is conspiring with NH State Republicans to keep his name from being disclosed. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/phone.jamming.motion.10.14.pdf

10/15/2004

James Tobin resigns as Bush-Cheney New England campaign chair. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003694.php

12/9/2004

Eight days after James Tobin’s indictment, the RNC starts paying lawyers to defend him. http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/08/whos_dopey_geor.php?comments=1

8/13/2005

Eight months later, Union Leader breaks story that RNC is paying Tobin’s legal bills.

12/15/2005

NH jury finds James Tobin guilty of conspiracy in the phone-jamming; his lawyers get more money from the RNC and start appealing within a week.

04/08/2006

Karl Rove thanks GOP lawyers for “clean elections.”

From AP’s Washington office:

…Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the [NH phone-jamming] case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 – as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was “preposterous” to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

Such details came to light only because the NH Democrats have filed civil charges, finally bypassing a snail-slow prosecution by the US Attorney’s office that the AP story kindly calls “narrow.” Just a few examples of things the Feds let slide as the case progressed:

• Federal prosecutors were very slow to start gathering evidence.
• Federal prosecutors failed to tape their interviews with suspect Allen Raymond, enabling Tobin’s defense lawyer to claim that evidence against his client had flourished and grown “like Pinocchio’s nose.”
• The Justice Department replaced prosecutor Todd Hinnen in August, 2005, handing the Tobin prosecution to US Attorney Andrew Levchuk, who was also handling ongoing responsibility for several other cases. By comparison, Tobin’s defense was handled by partner-level staff from two major law firms.
• The US Attorney never introduced evidence at Tobin’s trial about the suspicious timing of Tobin’s contributions to Tom DeLay (among many others) or the fact that Tobin’s legal bills were being paid by the RNC–strong evidence that James Tobin had something to hide.
• The US Attorney let Tobin’s defense make the case that Tobin had no way of knowing that the planned phone-jamming would affect rides to the polls, despite Chuck McGee’s clear testimony that this was his plan from the start. As a result, the jury acquitted Tobin of “depriving citizens of their right to vote.”

AlterNet and TPM Muckraker Paul Kiel seem to be on this story.

April 11 update from the Union Leader.

Update #2: Howard Dean’s on the case.

Update #3: The Senate Majority Project is hosting pdfs of the phone evidence and sworn affadavit that set this story in motion.

There’s an UN-welcome mat on the doorstep of NH.

Senator John McCain, who planned to step over that doorstep on April 7, now faces demands that he first fire his new “senior advisor” Terry Nelson. Why? NH Democrats explain:

…Terry Nelson was the National Political Director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2002, where he directly supervised New England Political Director James Tobin. This past December, Tobin was convicted of multiple felonies related to his involvement in the phone-jamming crime.

Not only did Nelson supervise Tobin at the time of the crime, but he then hired him again to work on the Bush-Cheney campaign – even after the RNC was told that Tobin was involved in the criminal phone jamming investigation. In fact, Tobin worked for Nelson again on the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, from which Tobin was eventually forced to resign because of his mounting legal problems.

Think it’s unlikely that McCain will fire Nelson? Josh Marshall’s point of view tickled my Funny Ha-Ha bone:

I’m one of those people who always think we should see the opportunities in situation and not just the down side. So, I’d say McCain should keep Nelson on staff and finally help us get the low-down on just how the phone-jamming episode went down. Who at the RNC knew about it? Who at the White House knew about it?

McCain said he would look into Nelson’s involvement a few weeks ago. So he must have the whole story.

While he’s at it he can ask Nelson about his role in the Tom DeLay money-laundering case too.

This way McCain can be a ‘reformer with results’ too.

I’d say either or both of these outcomes would be welcome.

Like the new graphic? Pass it on, under my usual Creative Commons license–Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-Alike.

I was hoping for something bigger, but the feds hauled in just one more little fish today:

Shaun Hansen, former co-owner of Idaho-based telemarketing firm Mylo Enterprises, appeared in a federal court in New Hampshire today to face charges for conspiring to commit, and aiding and abetting the commission of, interstate telephone harassment relating to a scheme to jam several New Hampshire telephone lines on Election Day, 2002, the Department of Justice announced today.

I’ll be curious to see how this case keeps evolving, but I wish the Feds would head up the political food chain instead of downward.

Somebody gave James Tobin a green light on this. And the RNC has paid almost three million dollars so far to keep the rest of the country from knowing who did it.

In less than a week now, the US Attorney will name the fourth co-conspirator in NH’s 2002 election day scandal, when the GOP paid telemarketers to make non-stop hang-up calls to NH Democrats and a firefighters’ union.

So who’s the fourth co-conspirator?

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman?

According to John DiStaso, convicted conspirator James Tobin phoned Ken Mehlman more than 75 times between Sept. 30 and Nov. 22 of 2002. Could this be why the RNC paid Tobin’s lawyers , and has kept on paying even after Tobin’s conviction, now up to $2.8 million…

Terry Nelson and Chris LaCivita were on Tobin’s witness list, but never called.

Terry Nelson is most famous recently for helping Abramoff and Delay launder $190,000 in corporate political funds. DCI Group lobbyist Chris LaCivita was a media strategist for the Swift Boat Veterans. In 2002, LaCivita and Nelson (like James Tobin) worked on the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). Tobin reported to LaCivita, according to his contract with the NRSC. Putting Democrats’ phones out of order on Election Day was a very bold step, an innovative use of the new technology of telemarketing, pushing the envelope of political ethics and legality. It’s hard to believe Tobin would have kept it a secret from his boss…

Darrell Henry, a lobbyist for the American Gas Association?

Chuck McGee testified that “Daryl” Henry knew about the planned phone-jamming and said he’d arrange for some help prolonging the phone calls. Mike Gehrke and Paul Kiel think Henry’s the most likely fourth conspirator.

Former NH State GOP Chairman John Dowd?

Chuck McGee testified that he went ahead with the phone-jam only after (he thought) Dowd had approved it. In January, 2003, Dowd awarded McGee a $6,000 bonus. On Election Day, however, Dowd was the person who got the phone jam stopped–and Dowd has stated that when he paid McGee the bonus, he was under the impression that the phone jam had never started. In my opinion, John Dowd deserves the benefit of the doubt here.

So, who’s my favorite for the fourth conspirator?

Chris LaCivita.

Less than a week to go before we find out…

“Absent the government’s recommendation that the defendent be given consideration for his cooperation,” NH phone-jammer Allen Raymond would have been sentence to 6 months in prison plus a fine of more than $30,000. Instead, the time in prison was reduced, first to five months, then finally to three.

Here’s a small excerpt from the February 9 written statement by US District Judge Joseph DiClerico, Jr, at the conclusion of United States of American v. Allen Raymond (Criminal No. 04-141-01-JD):

The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as American citizens and any scheme or plan that interferes with that right is despicable and strikes at the very heart of our American democratic processes…

the offense conduct in this case was serious and a sentence of incarceration is necessary to promote respect for the law, to provide just punishment for the offense, and to afford adequate deterrence to the criminal conduct of others who might consider any scheme to interfere with the right of citizens to get to the polls so that they can exercise their right to vote.

Judge DiClerico accepted, with a reluctance obvious in his four-page statement, the government’s request to lower Raymond’s sentence and fine. But he added 200 hours of community service, writing:

The victims of the offense were the organizations and their workers who were working hard to get people to the polls so they could exercise their right to vote; the voters who may have been seeking help in getting to the polls; voters in general; and the democratic process in general. The conduct in this case violated the integrity of our voting system. The defendant’s actions hurt the community as a whole, and it is therefore appropriate that he spend some time repaying the community, if in only some small way, for what he has done.
SO ORDERED.

This isn’t a Republican-versus-Democrat issue. Judge DiClerico was nominated to the Federal bench by US President George Herbert Walker Bush. This is a dirty-tricks-versus-honest-people issue.

The defendant’s cooperation with the USA bought him some consideration in this sentencing document. Legalistic quibbles about the meaning of “harass” or the different ways to block other people’s phone lines didn’t bring any benefit at all.

I drove up to NH today, gorgeous blue-skied day to go digging around the Court Clerk’s offices in Federal District Court, just to see what lawyers for convicted phone-jamming conspirator James Tobin are up to in exchange for the $2.3 million they’ve been paid (so far) by the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Tobin’s lawyers did their best work for the RNC during his trial, by convincing him that they would get him acquitted. Tobin chose not to make any plea bargain–and unknown numbers of unindicted co-conspirators breathed a sigh of relief. But despite “his” lawyers’ confidence, Mr. Tobin was convicted and shamed.

Now defense lawyers have filed three separate kinds of appeals. The boldest of these asks the district court to acquit Tobin, setting aside his jury’s verdict of guilty. Failing that, a different appeal demands that Tobin be given a second trial. A third appeal asks the court to “arrest judgment”. (Some relevant documents.)

Much of this effort is based on technicalities that have nothing to do with the conspirators’ attempt to disrupt a Federal election. Pages are spent complaining that phone calls don’t “harass” the recipient unless they are intended to cause fear. More pages are spent claiming that Tobin didn’t know that Democrats’ phone lines would be jammed with repeated phone calls–he might have thought they would be jammed by some different method.

Most if not all of these quibbles were already advanced during Tobin’s trial, to no avail. So what is the point of these scattershot appeals? Maybe the goal is to keep Mr. Tobin quiet until all his chances to swap information for mercy have passed him by. But what do I know–I am not a lawyer.

Interestingly, the defense’s motion for judgment of acquittal acknowledges that James Tobin did telephone Allen Raymond in order to promote the phone-jamming. During his trial they dramatically produced a witness who swore that Tobin’s phone call to Raymond was made at her behest, and on quite different business.

And I didn’t even tell you yet about my trip to Hillsborough County Courthouse in Manchester. Or my nominee for the coming-soon fourth indictment. Paul Kiel at TPMCafe thinks it’s Darryl Henry; I have a different idea. But for tonight, I’m getting too tired to type.

And that’s the conservative Manchester (NH) Union Leader. Here’s John DiStaso , two days ago, with a story that no other paper is following up:

Are Republican donors still paying big time for the legal defense of convicted 2002 phone-jamming conspirator James Tobin?

The Republican National Committee’s latest financial report shows a disbursement of $1,771,360.21 on Dec. 15 to the Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly LLP, which has defended Tobin since he was indicted in December 2004.

The RNC last August acknowledged doling out $722,000 for Tobin’s defense in 2004 and early 2005.

Yesterday, RNC spokesman Aaron McLear wouldn’t say what the latest disbursement to the firm was for.

If it was for Tobin, well — ka-ching. That’s a total of $2.5 million.

That ka-ching comes to you–not from Betsy Devine, a tax-and-spend liberal from way back–but from a very conservative NH newspaper, the only one trying to cover this cover-up…. Republicans too are unhappy with their national party’s slither down into corruption. Shame on the national press for letting this slide.

Why is the Republican National Committee still paying ninja DC lawyers to defend James Tobin, now that he’s been convicted for his role in the NH phone-jamming scandal? Is Tobin repaying them by keeping quiet? Was there some dark secret that needs to be kept quiet, something Tobin knew about when he headed the Bush Cheney 2004 campaign for all of New England?

Mark Karlin raised these question. It didn’t take much digging to find one obvious candidate for a smoking gun that Tobin might know about.

• Item: The Nader campaign got illicit help in Oregon, both from Bush-Cheney 2004 and from “Citizens for a Sound Economy.” Were similar tricks played in New England?
• Item: The NH Executive Director for Citizens for a Sound Economy was Chuck McGee — James Tobin’s co-conspirator in the phone-jamming.
• Item: NH Republican bigshot Dave Carney gave illicit help to Nader’s campaign–and the FEC’s general counsel urged them to prosecute him. Instead, the FEC simply dropped all charges.
• Item: Dave Carney and Grover Norquist were also closely involved with Sununu’s 2002 Senate campaign, the campaign where Tobin was helping promote the election phone-jamming.
• Item: Carney and Norquist also worked together in the 2004 election.

Hello, real reporters, I know you’re out there somewhere!

* Interesting: This CSE phone script.

If only Vince Foster, or Bill Clinton’s necktie, had been involved in the NH phone-jamming scandal! But they were not; Mark Karlin details the result:

I think it’s significant that James Tobin, who ran Bush/Cheney’s re-election campaign in New England, was indicted for wrongdoing not in that race but in the one two years before. It was the off-year election in 2002 – the Senate race in New Hampshire. So, after the 2004 election, the RNC spends big-time on the legal fees of an operative who stood indicted of malfeasance only in the previous election.

Why does this not a raise a certain question in the press? No inquiring journalist has asked why the Republicans spent so much on Tobin’s legal fees for a crime that he committed in 2002. Would it be improper to suggest that maybe Tobin also broke election laws in 2004, and that the party paid his tab because they wanted him to keep his mouth shut on the subject? Given all the loony speculations that the press was unafraid to air about Bill Clinton – the “murder” of Vince Foster, the secret signal Bill tried to send Monica through his necktie, etc. – why can such a question not be asked about the GOP?