JURIST - Paper Chase: Democrats going to court for GOP answers on New Hampshire phone jamming

[JURIST] Democrats will ask a federal judge Tuesday to order Republican Party and White House officials to answer questions in response to a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud committed during the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming plot [Wikipedia backgrounder]. During the trial of James Tobin [SourceWatch profile], President Bush's 2004 campaign chairman for New England who was convicted [US DOJ statement] of two counts related to telephone harassment for his role [JURIST report] in the plan to jam Democrats' phone lines during a get-out-the-vote drive, the US Justice Department used exhibits to show that the leaders in the plot had regular contact with the White House and the Republican Party as the plan progressed. An analysis of the phone records used in Tobin's criminal trial show that he made 115 outgoing calls to the same White House political affairs office during the three day period around Election Day 2002. The Republican National Committee, which spent over $722,000 [JURIST report] on lawyers to defend Tobin, said he had committed no crime.

Several key figures in the scheme to jam the phone lines have already received prison time. Allen Raymond, former president of Republican consulting group GOP Marketplace, has received [JURIST report] a five month sentence for his role in a plot and Chuck McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party [political party website], was sentenced [JURIST report] to seven months in prison and $2,000 in fines. McGee admitted that he had paid a Virginia telemarketing company more than $15,000 in a scheme to jam Democratic Party phone lines with computer-generated calls. The election concerned was a off-term Senate race between Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican John Sununu [official website], who won with 51 percent of the vote. AP has more.

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