NH Phone Jamming: Final Mystery SolvedHere’s a coda for those TPM readers who’ve followed the New Hampshire phone jamming over the past couple of years.
The perps have been caught, restitution has been ordered. But one detail lingered, a loose thread, and unsolved mystery, and it bugged folks: just prior to the phone-jamming, two checks totalling $15,000 found their way to the New Hampshire Republican Party. The jamming, performed by a telemarketing firm, cost approximately $15,000. Who wrote the checks? Two Indian tribal clients of crooked super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Did Abramoff finance the New Hampshire phone jamming?
The answer appears to be no. Todd Boulanger, a lobbyist in Abramoff’s shop, gave the two checks to a staffer for Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to pass along, because, the staffer says, Boulanger “wanted to help out.” Gregg wasn’t running that year, mind you, but Abramoff didn’t see that as a reason to stop passing money around.
So was that money meant to pay for the jamming? The Democrats say no. Paul Twomey, lawyer for the New Hampshire Democrats, told The New Hampshire Union-Leader, that “he is quite sure there is no Gregg connection to phone-jamming.”
There you have it: Sometimes a contribution is just a contribution — or as much as that could be the case when Jack Abramoff is involved.