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.

James Tobin, the high-level Republican operative convicted for his role in the New Hampshire phone jamming, may soon be heading off to jail, but the case lives on.

New Hampshire Democrats want to talk to the higher level Republicans Tobin reported to (like Tobin's contact at the White House, Alicia Davis), and so they've filed a motion in their ongoing civil suit against Republicans for the jamming to do just that.

Via the Senate Majority Project, I see that Steve Forbes has used the pages of his magazine to denounce the rank injustice done to his friend James Tobin. To Forbes, Tobin's conviction was a conspiracy between shifty "perpetrators" and a usually sensible judge who for some reason "gave instructions to the jury that virtually begged for a guilty verdict against Tobin."

If it weren't for Chuck McGee, there never would have been a New Hampshire phone jamming. McGee, then the Executive Director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, is a former Marine, and the idea of jamming the enemy's communications on Election Day was his inspiration.

That's just the sort of original thinking that the next generation of conservative strategists needs. So no doubt they'll benefit when they show up for the "GOP Campaign School" put on by the Republican direct mail outfit McGee works for.

According to a flier put out by Spectrum, McGee's employer, and obtained by The New Hampshire Union Leader, the school is a two-day seminar, "a nuts and bolts boot camp." Most ominously, it promises to give students "all the tools you need to win." McGee signs the flier as “vice president/political and corporate communications.”

Apparently McGee won't actually be leading the seminar - that honor goes to a former member of Maine's House of Representatives. But I imagine he'll be there to pull pupils aside and let them know how it's really done.

After the reams of bad press the Republican National Committee's gotten for covering millions in legal bills for anti-democratic felons, Ed Gillespie, the RNC's former chair, is attempting to fall on his sword and take the blame.

But he keeps missing.

The more he tries to explain that he alone is to blame for the decision, the more it becomes apparent that he had at least tacit approval from the White House.

Here's his latest:

The former chairman of the Republican National Committee remembers telling someone at the White House that he had decided to have the RNC pay the legal defense bills for convicted phone-jamming conspirator James Tobin, but he can’t remember who.

Ed Gillespie told the New Hampshire Union Leader yesterday he informed the White House after he decided to authorize payment.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Gillespie told its reporter that he had “informed the White House, without seeking formal approval, before authorizing the payments.”

Gillespie told the Union Leader the two accounts were “consistent” because he decided to authorize the payments before telling the White House and actually authorized the payments after telling the White House....

Gillespie yesterday told the Union Leader he could not remember who at the White House he informed of his decision to pick up Tobin’s legal bills.

“I’m not going to guess,” he said. “It was years ago, but as a matter of routine, I would have told somebody over there.”

If someone at the White House had expressed displeasure with his decision, Gillespie said, “It was too late. I had made the decision and they were not involved in it.” [Emphasis added.]

So here's the whole story as Gillespie tells it. He made an arbitrary decision that the RNC would cover Tobin's legal bills. Why? Because "it's the custom, not written anywhere, that you covered your people." - (N.B. according to Ken Mehlman, the RNC has since revoked this honorable, unwritten custom: "consulting contracts now explicitly declare that independent contractors must be prepared to pay their own legal costs in civil and criminal cases.") Having made that decision, he then informed someone at the White House, he can't remember who, that he was going to abide by this unwritten rule. But this was just a heads up, a courtesy, not a dialogue. It was non-negotiable.

Sound funny to you?

OK, so James Tobin came away with 10 months in prison. That's the longest sentence given to any of the players in the phone jamming - Chuck McGee got seven months and Allen Raymond got five - but there are a number of unhappy TPMm readers out there, who've followed this case for over three years. They wanted more than just 10 months.

Of course, so did prosecutors, who asked for two years. And the judge, if he chose, could have departed from the sentencing guidelines and given Tobin the maximum sentence of seven years.

But perhaps there's some solace in this: the judge denied Tobin's appeals and took the unusual step of denying his bail pending appeal. That means that Tobin is heading straight to prison - he's due to enter June 23rd. In most cases, he would have been allowed to stay out until his further appeals ran their course. Appeals can last months, even years. Apparently the judge doesn't think that his appeals have much merit.

So where does this leave the phone jamming case?

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