Ex-GOP Official Faces Conspiracy Charge

[DoYouEverWonder]

December 6, 2005, 10:42 PM EST

CONCORD, N.H. -- A former national Republican Party official played a key role in an Election Day 2002 phone jamming plot against New Hampshire Democrats, the prosecution said Tuesday during opening statements.

James Tobin, President Bush's onetime New England campaign chairman, is being tried on one federal count of conspiring against voters' rights and several counts involving telephone harassment. He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Levchuk said the state GOP's former executive director, Chuck McGee, had Tobin's blessing for the scheme as well as his help in the plot to disrupt Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks and a nonpartisan ride-to-the-polls line.

Tobin, 45, resigned as New England chairman of Bush's 2004 campaign in October 2004 when the phone jamming accusations became public. Tobin also has been political director of the Republican National Committee.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-gop-phone-jamming,0,5948186.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Another one bites the dust.

[goclark]

1. Yes!

[Auntie Bush]

2. Makes me wonder if there are any honest moral folks in the GOP. n/t

[Synnical]

3. Yet another one!

Okay who has the list of Repuke/GOP officials indicted/under investigation?

[Judi Lynn]

4. It can't be stressed enough this creep was Bush's New Hampshire

state campaign chairman, just as was Katherine Harris, in Florida, 2000.

From an article published this summer:

August 11, 2005

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Bush Official
By JOHN SOLOMON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -

Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire's newest senator.

At the time, Tobin was the RNC's New England regional director, before moving to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.
(snip/...)

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-wh/2005/aug/11/081101319.html

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. can Sununu be recalled?

or is it a done deal?

[OffWithTheirHeads]

6. Hang the Bastard!

n/t

[Rodger Dodger]

7. It's getting pretty bad for the Grand Old Party

Inditement after enditment is evidence to the World that democracy's can be manipulated if you have enough money.

[WhiteTara]

8. I hope he pleads not guilty so

that we can have a trial splash across the media. Unless of course, the plea bargain gives him jail time and names up the chain.