As part of their ongoing law suit against the New Hampshire Republicans regarding the jamming of Democratic phone banks on Election Day, 2002, the Democrats alleged a “deliberate cover up” by the GOP in a filing earlier this week. Notes from FBI interviews indicate that that a number of senior officials with the New Hampshire Republican State Committee [NHRSC] knew of the jamming and consciously covered it up, they say.
The FBI’s 2003 interview with NHRSC Executive Director Chuck McGee is especially revealing in this regard [we’ve posted it here]. McGee, who has said he originally hatched the plan to jam Democrat’s phones, told the FBI that he’d discussed the jamming before Election Day with the NHRSC’s Chair, the Vice Chair, Finance Director, and four other senior level Republican staffers in the state. McGee pled guilty for his role in the jamming and has already served his time.
McGee said that the Party’s Chairman John Dowd gave him the go-ahead the night before the election [Dowd, for his part, admitted to The New Hampshire Union Leader that McGee told him of the plan, but said he did not authorize it]; that the Vice Chair gave him the number of the Manchester Professional Firefighters Union, one of the jamming’s targets; and that the Financial Director, who signed the check to pay for the jamming, disclosed to the FEC that the money was for “GOTV” (Get Out the Vote efforts) when she knew what it was really for [she corroborated this in her interview with the FBI].
Despite the apparent widespread knowledge within the NHRSC about McGee’s plan, the NHRSC has tried to portray themselves as “the innocent victim of a single rogue employee acting alone,” the Dems write in their motion.
The seven-page motion, filed August 7th, seeks to unseal documents pertaining to an NHRSC internal investigation regarding the jamming. Counsel for the Republicans was not immediately available for comment.