Phone Jamming Cover-up at DoJ? Conyers Wants AnswersIt happened nearly five years ago, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) still has plenty of questions about the New Hampshire phone jamming case.
In a letter Wednesday, he asked Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler a number of questions about the case, focusing in particular on whether the Justice Department has “adequately investigated and prosecuted” the case. You can read the letter here.
On Election Day, 2002, remember, Republicans schemed to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks (here’s our timeline of the scandal). The executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, Charles McGee, who hatched the scheme, subsequently explained that he’d gotten the idea from his time in the Marines, where he was taught to jam the enemy’s communications. Both McGee and Allen Raymond, who ran the consulting firm that arranged the jamming, pled guilty and have served their time.
The case moved slowly — the pleas not occurring until June of 2004. And it wasn’t until after the 2004 election that James Tobin, who’d been the Republian National Committee’s New England Regional Political Director, was indicted for his role in the conspiracy. He was ultimately convicted, but then the verdict was reversed on appeal. Tobin will go to trial again this December.
Democrats say it’s no accident that the case took so long.
As part of a civil suit over the jamming, the FBI turned over more than 5000 pages of investigative materials to Democratic lawyers. The documents revealed, they say, that only one FBI agent was assigned to the case on a part-time basis, and that “the agent was continually given other assignments which interfered with her ability to conduct a coherent intensive investigation.” The lawyers will be transferring those documents to the Conyers’ committee sometime next week.
In the letter, Conyers asks a list of questions about the phone jamming case — in addition to questions about another voter suppression scheme involving the conservative voter registration firm Sproul & Associates. The questions focus on what the Department did to investigate the jamming, whether it stopped the probe from reaching into the White House, and whether it communicated to the White House or RNC about the probe. He wants answers by October 19th. Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), and Bobby Scott (D-VA) also signed on to the letter.