Has the New Hampshire phone-jamming case finally come to a quiet end?

Federal prosecutors have dropped their case against former regional NRSC official James Tobin in connection with a GOP plot to jam the phone lines of the New Hampshire Democratic party on Election Day 2002, reports the Associated Press.

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It'd be hard to blame GOP bigwig Ken Mehlman for breathing a sigh of relief this morning.

The Bangor Daily News reports that a judge yesterday dismissed the case against James Tobin, the former GOP official who was accused of participating in a plot to jam the phones of the New Hampshire Democratic party on Election Day 2002.

Tobin had in 2005 been convicted of participating in the plot, but that conviction was overturned two years later. This time, he was charged with lying to the FBI about his role in the scheme.

But US District Court Judge George Singal ruled that bringing charges against Tobin in Maine, where Tobin lives, after he had been cleared in New Hampshire of the original charges, qualified as a "vindictive prosecution".

Two other people -- the head of the New Hampshire GOP and a Republican consultant -- have served jail time for their roles in the phone jamming, which may have played a role in John Sununu's defeat of Jeanne Shaheen in the U.S. Senate race that year.

Phone records released in those cases show that Tobin, at the time a New-England-based staffer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, made two dozen calls to the office of Mehlman, then-White House political director, within a three-day period around Election Day 2002. Mehlman has said none of the calls involved the phone-jamming incident.

But the Republican National Committee has admitted to paying Tobin's legal bills during that case, totaling nearly $3 million.

James Tobin, the former GOP official accused of participating in a plot to jam Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire on Election Day 2002, appeared in court yesterday and pleaded not guilty to new charges related to the episode.

Tobin was earlier convicted of telephone harassment in connection with the scheme, but the conviction was overturned last year, and this year he was acquitted. He never served jail time. Prosecutors had appealed, but recently filed new charges, alleging Tobin lied to FBI investigators during questioning about the plot.

The case is being heard in federal court in Portland, Maine, Tobin's home state.

Two other people -- the head of the New Hampshire GOP and a Republican consultant -- have served jail time for their roles in the phone jamming.

Phone records released in the case show that Tobin, at the time a New-England-based staffer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, made two dozen calls to the office of then-White House political director Ken Mehlman within a three-day period around Election Day 2002. Mehlman has said none of the calls involved the phone-jamming incident.

But the Republican National Committee has admitted to paying Tobin's legal bills during that case, totaling nearly $3 million.

Given the news that James Tobin has been indicted for making false statements to the FBI in connection with their investigation into the GOP plot to jam Democratic phones on Election Day 2002, it's worth stepping back a bit to recap how we got to this point.

In 2002, Republican John Sununu and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen were in a tight race for an open Senate seat. On Election Day, over 800 computerized hang-up calls jammed phone lines set up by the Democratic party and the Manchester firefighters' union for get-out-the-vote activities on behalf of Shaheen and other Democratic candidates. Sununu won the race by about 20,00 votes.

At the time, Tobin was the regional director, overseeing New Hampshire, for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

In 2004, Charles McGee, the head of the New Hampshire GOP at the time of the incident, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the scheme. Allen Raymond, a Republican consultant whose firm was hired by McGee to carry out the plan, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Both have served jail time for their roles in the affair.

As for Tobin, his legal proceedings have been more complicated. He was convicted of putting McGee and Raymond in touch, and sentenced to jail time. But he never served time -- the conviction was overturned on appeal in March 2007, with a court ruling that the government had not shown that Tobin intended to harass. It remanded the case to a U.S. District Court in Concord, where a judge acquitted Tobin in February of this year, saying his ruling had been "constrained" by the appeals court ruling. In March, the government appealed that decision. That appeal was making its way through the courts when last week's indictment for making false statements was filed.

From the start, there has been evidence tying senior White House and Republican party figures to the case. The Republican National Committee has admitted to paying Tobin's legal bills during that case, totaling nearly $3 million.*

And phone records released in the case show that Tobin made two dozen calls to the office of then-White House political director Ken Mehlman within a three-day period around Election Day 2002. Mehlman has said none of the calls involved the phone-jamming incident.

* This paragraph has been edited from a previous version.

Former Republican operative James Tobin has been indicted for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the bureau's investigation of a phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire in 2002, according to court filings examined by TPMmuckraker.

Details to follow...

Update: Here's the indictment. It contains two counts, both related to making false statements to the FBI during its investigation into the New Hampshire GOP's effort to jam the phones of the Democratic Party on Election Day 2002.

It charges, in part:

"Tobin stated that when he first called Allen Raymond to discuss the phone-jamming scheme, Raymond and Charles McGee had already spoken with each other about the plans. In fact, as Tobin well knew, Tobin spoke with Raymond before Raymond was contacted by McGee, and Tobin requested that Raymond assist McGee with the plan."

McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, and Raymond, a GOP consultant, both were convicted and served jail time in connection with the scheme.

But Tobin's own 2005 conviction relating to the scheme was thrown out on appeal in 2007*.

Dane Butswinkas of the Washington law firm Williams and Connolly, who is representing Tobin, declined to comment when reached by TPMmuckraker. The Republican National Committee has in the past paid for Williams and Connolly's defense of Tobin.

And phone records released in Tobin's 2005 trial show that he made two dozen calls to the office of Ken Mehlman, then the White House's political director, within a three-day period around Election Day 2002. Mehlman has said none of the calls involved the phone-jamming incident.

According to a court document, each count is a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

*This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

Today at two, convicted New Hampshire phone jammer and author Allen Raymond will testify before the House Judiciary Committee as part of its ongoing probe into the 2002 crime.

They keep on asking questions because they have gone unanswered. As Raymond laid it out in How To Rig An Election, he doesn't buy the story that Jim Tobin, the former Republican National Committee official who was convicted for his part in arranging the jamming, didn't confer with his higher-ups in the RNC and the White House about the scheme. And since he personally urged well-connected Republicans to snuff the Justice Department's investigation, he certainly doesn't think it's far-fetched that they took his advice.

Your quick refresher on the details of the scheme: Charles McGee, then the executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, was the one who had the genius idea of jamming Democratic phone lines on Election Day. He called Jim Tobin, the New England Regional Director of the RNC, to ask for help implementing it. Tobin then called Raymond, whom he knew from working on the 2000 Steve Forbes campaign and who ran a telemarketing consulting firm, to see if he could do the job. Raymond said he could, and things went on from there.

After the jamming came to light in early 2003, it took until after the 2004 elections for Tobin was finally indicted. Democrats have alleged that the probe was slow-rolled and stifled by an inadequate devotion of resources at the FBI.

Despite the fact that the Justice Department has so far stonewalled the committee's requests for information and documents about the probe, they are trying to keep it in the public eye with a hearing today.

And they might get some help on that score from Hollywood. The AP reported over the weekend that Billy Ray, the writer and director of Shattered Glass, is working on an adaptation of Raymond's book.

Allow me to make some casting suggestions. Jon Voight as Jim Tobin, I'd say. Philip Seymour Hoffman would be a strong choice to play McGee (he's pictured to the left there). Paul Giamatti as Raymond. And maybe Josh could be persuaded to play himself.

"You can take me out of the system, but that's like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean." Here's Allen Raymond, the New Hampshire phone jammer, talking about How to Rig An Election with Jon Stewart last night:

For those who missed it, here's my vote for the most memorable excerpt from the book.

Raymond has also been blogging over at TPMCafe this week.

In the aftermath of the New Hampshire phone jamming, the Republican National Committee could have gone two ways, Allen Raymond writes in his new book. They chose the scapegoating/stonewalling route.

The question of whether they had any help from the political appointees at the Department of Justice is one House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) wants an answer to. His letter today to Attorney General Michael Mukasey (a follow-up to the one he sent in October) is below.

Since the crime at issue happened more than five years ago, let me refresh you on the details. Our timeline of the scandal is here.

Charles McGee, then the executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, was the one who had the genius idea of jamming Democratic phone lines. He called Jim Tobin, the New England Regional Director of the Republican National Committee, to ask for help implementing it. Tobin then called Raymond, whom he knew from working on the 2000 Steve Forbes campaign and who ran a telemarketing consulting firm, to see if he could do the job. Raymond said he could, and things went on from there.

The jamming scheme came to light in early 2003, but it took until the summer of 2004 before Raymond and McGee pleaded guilty. Tobin himself, who fought the charges tooth and nail with the backing of the RNC (who dropped $3 million on his lawyers), wasn't indicted until the December after the 2004 election.

Democrats have long alleged that the Justice Department slow-rolled the probe. The FBI only assigned one, part-time agent to the case, they say, and prosecutors refused to follow the case to its logical conclusion, such as charging the New Hampshire GOP.

A McClatchy piece yesterday substantiated a number of those complaints, quoting an anonymous official as saying that the probe was delayed in order to avoid the scandal clashing with the 2004 election. Conyers' letter takes that ball and runs with it, demanding answers.

Raymond himself provides some grist for Conyers' mill.

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As Josh wrote earlier this week, I've been gobbling up the new tell-all by Allen Raymond, the former GOP consultant of New Hampshire phone jamming fame.

You might wonder why Raymond, a life-time Republican operator, decided to write the book (which is due out in early January). The short answer, as he writes: "when the shit hit the fan, my political party and my former colleagues not only threw me under the bus but then blamed me for getting run over."

Raymond's telemarketing consulting firm engineered the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming, where Republicans jammed Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks. But it wasn't his idea (it was the New Hampshire GOP's executive director's), and he was referred to the job by a big-wig from the Republican National Committee (more on this shortly). Yet when the story broke, his former co-conspirators did all they could to pin the thing entirely on him.

So, with nothing left to lose, Raymond walks readers through his rise in the ranks at the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (where he encounters Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whom he frequently compares to "a sheet of drywall"), and finally on to create his own telemarketing firm, which he started with the help of Haley Barbour, now the governor of Mississippi. He also gives great insight into the murky world of phone tricks.

You might say he holds a grudge. But you can't say he minces words. "Back in 2002," he writes, "just about every Republican operative was so dizzy with power that if you could find two of us who could still tell the difference between politics and crime, you could probably have rubbed us together for fire as well."

Or in case he wasn't clear, he writes about heading to prison for his role in the jamming: "After ten full years inside the GOP, ninety days among honest criminals wasn't really any great ordeal."

So about those phone tricks. The jamming, Raymond says, was a unique stunt. Much more common were false information campaigns via robocalls, push polling, and then sneakier stunts like the one described in the passage below.

To set the scene: Raymond got a call in 2000* from two former colleagues in New Jersey who ran a consulting shop called Jamestown Associates. They were working for Dick Zimmer, who was running against Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), the incumbent, and they were pulling out all the stops. (Ed. Note: This post originally stated that this happened in 2002 -- that was my mistake, not Raymond's.)

They'd already succeeded in getting a Green Party candidate on the ballot to drain liberal votes from Holt (a favorite GOP trick). And they had already put Raymond's firm to work calling Green-oriented households and urging them to support the Green candidate.

But what came next was "even better":

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It 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.

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The New Hampshire phone jamming caper lives on!

In a letter to House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) today, Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH) asks that the committee investigate. Not only is there evidence that the White House might have been involved in the jamming, Hodes writes, but there's evidence that Justice Department officials interfered in the prosecution. He wants the committee to "determine if a politically motivated plot did in fact obstruct justice in this case, and if so to take such steps as may be reasonable." You can read his letter here. Democrats had earlier requested that the Senate Judiciary Committee probe the matter.

Three guilty pleas and one conviction have resulted from investigation of the scheme, where Republicans conspired to jam Democratic phone lines on Election Day, 2002.

It looks like the high level Republican official convicted for his role in the New Hampshire phone jamming might get off on a technicality.

An appeals court yesterday reversed the conviction of James Tobin. Tobin has been sentenced to 10 months in prison, 2 years probation, and a $10,000 fine, but has stayed out of prison during the appeal.

In a decision that turned on the technicalities of the statute under which Tobin was convicted, the First Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court to hash out the issue. It was not a total victory for Tobin's lawyers, who had sought an acquittal.

But a lawyer friend describes the decision as a major hit to the prosecution:

OK, I read it. This is a big deal, more than just appellate ping pong.

The conviction is overturned because of flawed jury instructions. So the government would have to retry Tobin, but the language of the ruling pretty strongly suggests that the Circuit Court is not convinced that the statute applies here, a position the district court is likely to consider carefully in entertaining any motion from Tobin to dismiss.

If I were a prosecutor, I'd be hard-pressed to retry the case. Even if you managed to get the case to trial again in front of the district judge, you have a very skeptical circuit court waiting for another appeal.

Tobin may very well walk.

You can read a copy of the decision here. And this is an invitation for you lawyers out there to weigh in in the comments.

We reported earlier that people were asking questions about the Justice Department's handling of the Jack Abramoff investigation. Now New Hampshire Democrats are raising questions about another DoJ investigation into Republican wrongdoing -- the New Hampshire phone jamming case.

In a detailed, 10-page letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signed by Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the Democrats, they argue that the investigation, which targeted prominent operatives in the Republican Party, was stalled and mishandled.

On Election Day in 2002, Republicans schemed to jam the phone banks for Democratic get out the vote efforts. Two Republicans involved in the plan pled guilty, and James Tobin, formerly the New England Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee, was convicted for his role. The case took years to play out; the first guilty pleas in the case were not until the summer of 2004, and Tobin was not indicted until after the 2004 election.

One of the reasons the investigation was stalled, Democrats argue, is that "all decisions had to be reviewed by the Attorney General himself" -- first John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales. To back up that claim, the Democrats say that lawyers working on the case were told by prosecutors that delays in the case were due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining authorization from higher levels at DOJ for any and all actions in the case.

A lawyer for one of the Republicans in the case backs up that claim. John Durken, the lawyer for Allen Raymond, a Republican whose consulting firm managed the jamming, says that the lead prosecutor in the case told him during one meeting that Ashcroft was involved in every decision. "He said, 'Every decision in this case goes all the way up to Ashcroft’s desk.'" Durken told me that such a fact didn't "surprise" him, given the political nature of the case.

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Here'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.

With all our coverage recently on the Republican robo call harrassment campaign, don't think we've forgotten about its predecessor, the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming, when GOP operatives carried out a plan to jam Democratic GOTV operations.

Shaun Hansen, the telemarketer who carried out the jamming, has pled guilty. So that makes four conservative convictions and/or guilty pleas in the case.

That plea likely concludes the criminal investigation of the incident. The New Hampshire Democratic Party's lawsuit against the state Republican Party continues, however, and will go to trial December 4th.

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.

Last week, the Senate Majority Project dredged up the fact that Allen Raymond, whose consulting firm was hired to jam New Hampshire Democratic phone banks on Election Day in 2002, appeared to still be in the teleservices business.

But Raymond, who's been out of jail for only about five weeks, told me that he's "effectively out of politics" and says he's moved on to a career in real estate investment.

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Who knows what they'll find?

From the Senate Majority Project:

This morning, Hillsborough Superior Court Judge Philip Mangones granted the New Hampshire Democratic Party's motion to take sworn depositions and discovery from the White House and top DC Republican operatives in the civil suit arising from the 2002 phone jamming scandal.

Update: Here's the AP on today's day in court.

Fallout from the New Hampshire phone jamming continues, as feds are pressing their case against Shaun Hansen, who was just a simple conservative Idahoan running a telemarketing firm before he got caught up with the wrong crowd. Or so he'll argue when he goes on trial October 3rd for his role in the New Hampshire phone jamming.

Hansen's role was akin to that of the hired hit man - it was his machines that actually did the jamming. But he clearly thinks that he's getting screwed for being a loyal soldier, so he'll point fingers up the chain of command when the time comes to defend himself.

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Oh, what are the odds?

It turns out that one of the justices hearing New Hampshire phone jammer James Tobin's appeal has his own history of dirty tricks.

Judge Howard ran as a Republican for the New Hampshire governorship back in 2000. He lost -- but not before his campaign threw a few sucker punches at one of his opponents. From the official investigation report from the state Attorney General, filed after the election:

One of those activities entailed putting out an anonymous mailing that charged Humphrey's wife with being an "active member of a cult ... that advocates adults and children having orgasms as a means of achieving inner peace." [Roll Call, 8/2/01]

The AG charged Howard's aides with failing to register their political activities with the secretary of state. That's not as grandiose as sabotaging Democratic phone banks, but it should help him understand Tobin's plight. (The Senate Majority Project has a great rundown on all the judges.)

Via SMP.

After convicted Republican New Hampshire phone jamming kingpin James Tobin was sentenced in May, the judge took the unusual step of denying his motion to stay out of jail while his appeal was heard. He was due to enter a minimum security prison Friday.

Now that decision has been reversed by an appeals court, and Tobin will remain free. So it may be as much as another year before he starts serving his time, even if he loses.

Other players in the case have already served their time and moved on, but Tobin, who's fought every step of the way, just keeps going. He's like the Energizer bunny. Except he's a felon.

Yesterday, a judge in New Hampshire decided not to end the Democrats suit against Republicans for the jamming of Democratic phone banks on Election Day, 2002.

The judge did knock off the majority of the suit's claims, including one that the GOP had interfered with voters' right to a free and fair election, but most important for Democrats, 3 of the 8 claims remained.

That means they'll have the opportunity to question higher ranking Republicans, like former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie and former White House staffer Alicia Davis and others on their wish list, whether they knew anything about the scheme.

Allen Raymond, the GOP businessman who arranged the jamming of Democratic phone banks in New Hampshire on Election Day, 2002, emerged from prison ten days ago. And in his first ever interview about the jamming, he sounds like a man who's gained some clarity from his three months in the slammer:

... [Raymond] said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones ``pushed the envelope" but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC [James Tobin], fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless.

"Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business," he said. "It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities."

For those of you who wonder whether Raymond will be getting back into politics like Chuck McGee (another ex-con who recently helped to put on a "GOP Campaign School") -- not to worry. He says he's going into real estate investment.