So reports Raw Story:
A new liberal Senate advocacy group has filed a Federal Elections Commission criminal complaint against the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, who they allege may have illegally concealed the receipt and amount of a contribution from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians — a native American client of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, RAW STORY has learned.
The Senate Majority Project says the Choctaw’s contribution helped finance the Republicans’ efforts to stymie get out the vote phone lines by illegally “jamming” calls.
Sex, bribes, and dirty tricks. Today’s Grand Old Party at work. I suppose it was only a matter of time before a connection was found between the phone jamming scandal and Mr. Abramoff. He seems to be the Rosetta Stone of all the Republican scandals with ties to Tom DeLay and other GOP Congresscritters, defense contractors, lobbyists, the Bush White House, ad nauseam.
Follow me below the fold for more on who else is a player in this developing story . . .
First, for anyone unfamiliar with this particular Rethuglican outrage, a brief summary of the scandal from Wikipedia:
The 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal involves the use of a telemarketing firm hired by that state’s Republican Party (NHGOP) for election tampering.
During that state’s 2002 election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert C. Smith, the NHGOP hired GOP Marketplace, based in Northern Virginia, to jam another phone bank being used by the state Democratic Party and the firefighters’ union for efforts to turn out voters on behalf of then-governor Jeanne Shaheen on Election Day. John E. Sununu, the Republican candidate, won a narrow victory. In addition to criminal prosecutions, disclosures in the case have come from an ongoing civil suit filed by the state’s Democratic Party against the NHGOP.
Three men have been convicted of federal crimes for their involvement as of 2006 and a fourth is under indictment. However, investigators and those who have followed the scandal closely believe that there were more people involved at the national level. It has been suggested that some high-ranking Republican Senate leaders were aware, and more recently records showing phone calls from the political operative convicted of engineering the scheme have raised questions as to whether officials in the Bush Administration were involved as well.
Let’s make a list of GOP luminaries whose names have been mentioned in the Press as having a connection to the crininal investigation of this scandal, or to persons who were targets of the investigation, starting with . . .
Haley Barbour, the current Governor of Mississippi:
Last Friday, the AP reported that GOP big-wig Haley Barbour was one of the investors in GOP Marketplace, the consulting firm central to the New Hampshire phone jamming.
But a closer read of the company’s founding documents shows a much deeper connection than Barbour admitted to the AP. He had direct control over the company’s management. And a look at the timeline of the company’s founding shows that it was something of a pet project for Barbour and his partners. […]
Furthermore, HELM Partners [note: Babour’s firm wich subsidized GOP Marketplace] seems to have been formed solely for the purpose of funding Raymond’s firm. According to the certificate of organization, GOP Marketplace was formed May 19, 2000, just days before HELM was formed on June 1st, 2000, Virginia corporation records show. There is no evidence that HELM ever invested in another company.
Ken Mehlman and the White House:
James Tobin, the RNC big-wig who helped orchestrate the now-famous New Hampshire phone jamming of 2002, made a lot of calls the day of the crime – but three in particular indicate that his superiors at the White House’s Office of Political Operations, then run by Ken Mehlman, may have known what he was up to. They show, in rapid succession on the morning of the jamming, Tobin checking his voice mail, then calling the New Hampshire Republican State Committee (NHRSC), and then calling the White House. […]
Tobin’s called this number 110 times between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002.
The Republican National Committee:
While under no legal obligation to do so, the RNC has paid more than $2.5 million in legal fees incurred by Tobin, who in 2004 was the New England director for the Bush-Cheney campaign. […]
[LINK] . . . James Tobin worked both for the Republican National Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee at the time [that the phone jamming took place].
Texas congressman and former House majority leader Tom DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (ARMPAC) also contributed $5,000 [to the Sununu campaign, the beneficiary of the phone jamming scheme].
Michael Scanlon and Ralph Reed:
And now there are new details that show that two of Abramoff’s business associates, Michael Scanlon and Ralph Reed, had both hired GOP Marketplace, the consulting firm hired to do the jamming, to do election work during the same year.
Just keeps getting more and more interesting, doesn’t it? By the way, for those with a further interest in all the sordid details, Talking Points Memo has a nice timeline for you to read here. Hats off also to TPM Muckraker.com for much of the information about this case which I’ve cited above.
Vermont GOP Phone Jamming Scandal