Police in Concord, the state capital, were notified by Democratic workers on the day of the election that they were receiving repeated telephone calls, terminating after five seconds, which were interfering with their efforts to reach voters and offer rides to the polls.
[1] The story forced the resignation of state GOP executive director Charles McGee shortly afterward, when he admitted lying to the paper.
Drawing on his military background, he decided to disrupt "enemy communications" and called several telemarketing firms he knew to have Republican sympathies.
However, James Tobin, then Northeast field director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), put McGee in touch with GOP Marketplace, a northern Virginia firm run by Allen Raymond, which had been hired by the New Hampshire party for similar voter-turnout efforts.
Steve Kornacki of politicsnj.com discovered[2] that Raymond, a New Jersey native, had worked for James Treffinger, a former gubernatorial candidate then under indictment for a phone scandal during that state's 2001 Republican primary for the senatorial nomination, in which calls were made smearing two of his opponents.
During Super Bowl XXXVI on February 3, 2002, Raymond's firm had placed calls to prospective voters that not only attacked one of Treffinger's rivals but purported to be from another.
[6] In an op-ed for the Concord Monitor, Smith called the phone jamming "an outrage" and deplored the lack of Republican anger over "this despicable action by pathetic political hacks".
[7] In October, an affidavit[8] filed by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and released to the media contained information that made it possible to identify the third man as Tobin, then serving as the New England regional director for the Bush campaign.
In July, the Union Leader reported that one of Tobin's attorneys told the court he was representing the defendant in his capacity as an employee of the Republican National Committee (RNC).
Shortly before the trial started, Marshall reported[20] that the state's witness list included Terry Nelson, former political director for the Bush campaign.
On election day, computerized hang-up calls jammed phone lines set up by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters' union.
[23] Phone records show Tobin made two dozen calls to the White House Office of Political Affairs within a three-day period around Election Day 2002.
A number of observers have noted that contact between the White House Office of Political Affairs and presidential campaign staff is historically commonplace for Democratic and Republican administrations.
During the summer of 2004, Charles McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and admitted paying $15,600 to an Alexandria, Virginia telemarketing company, GOP Marketplace, that hired another business to make the calls.
Republican consultant Allen Raymond, GOP Marketplace's former president, also pleaded guilty in the summer to a conspiracy charge in federal court.
The first day apparently went well for the defense, when key prosecution witness Chuck McGee seemed to back away from testimony he had agreed to make in exchange for plea bargains.
[25] McGee's testimony suggested that the DCI Group, a powerful public relations firm which publishes the Tech Central Station website and is closely connected to the Republican party, was involved through lawyer and New Hampshire native Brian McCabe.
[16] Since Tobin's superior at the NRSC, Chris LaCivita, worked at the time for the United States Chamber of Commerce,[26] it is possible that he, too, had foreknowledge of the plan.
Raymond said he'd also run the idea past Kenneth Gross, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission, currently a partner in the powerful firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
[37] Later that year, Tobin's wife and her partner, a long time New England political operative, were hired as consultants by Rhode Island senator Lincoln Chafee's re-election campaign, which was ultimately unsuccessful.
[42] After over a year of no further legal or investigative developments, on October 9, 2008, a federal grand jury in Maine indicted Tobin anew on two counts of making false statements to FBI agents.
[44] The judge held that the government could not overcome the legal presumption that the post-appeal charges arising from the same conduct were "vindictive" under United States v. Goodwin, 457 U.S. 372 (1982) and Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357 (1978).
[citation needed] Noel Hillman, who was credited with moving the case to trial as head of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, was nominated[45] for a federal judgeship by President Bush in January 2006.
[47] Charles McGee served seven months in prison, and now works at campaign school for GOP candidates, run by a Republican political marketing firm.
[48] A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls to the White House between September 17 and November 22, 2002.
[49] Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting, a three-day period during which the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out, and then abruptly shut down.
[50][51] Mehlman said that the calls were simply part of the many he and his assistant made to field operatives in competitive races all over the country during that time period.
[53] On April 28, 2006, the Associated Press reported that Haley Barbour, the former RNC chair now serving as governor of Mississippi, had provided a $250,000 startup loan to GOP Marketplace through his investment company, HELM Partners, in 2000.
On May 12, 2006, U.S. Rep John Conyers (Dem, Michigan) sent a formal request to U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales, asking him to name a special prosecutor to investigate the 2002 phone jamming.