N.H. Dems want fresh look at phone-jamming

[MaineDem]

Source: AP/Boston Globe

CONCORD, N.H. --State Democrats want Congress to investigate whether politics delayed prosecution of a Republican phone-jamming plot in New Hampshire until after the 2004 presidential election.

The national furor over alleged politics in the firings of eight federal prosecutors prompted the move, state party Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The scheme devised by state and national Republicans jammed local Democratic ride-to-the-polls and a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote phone bank for about 90 minutes on Election Day 2002, the year of a hotly contested U.S. Senate race between then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, and then-U.S. Rep. John Sununu, a Republican, who won. The case resulted in four criminal convictions, including that of strategist James Tobin, of Bangor, Maine, who was New England chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign two years later.

Allegations of Tobin's involvement led him to resign that post the month before the election and he was indicted the month after it -- timing that has prompted Democratic suspicions before. But members of Congress seeking answers to questions about the prosecutor firings should seek some about phone-jamming at the same time, Sullivan said.

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/03/20/nh_dems_want_fresh_look_at_phone_jamming/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News

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This is an excellent move on Kathy Sullivan's part. Keeping this in the public eye is important. Remember, there were calls to the White House political office involved in this.

[diane in sf]

1. excellent!

Never relent in the prosecution of these sorry bastards.

[Miss Chybil]

2. Everyone should wonder what the prosecutors who weren't fired did to keep their jobs... nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's about time some REAL investigation was done on this crime!

Also, from the article MaineDem posted:

In the civil case, Democrats had sought to make connections from the phone jamming to the White House and high-level Republicans like Ken Mehlman, then White House political director and later, chairman the Republican National Committee, through a pattern of phone calls made around the time of the jamming. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is at the heart of the prosecutor firings scandal, served as a White House counsel then.

Sullivan said speculation over a possible connection between the jamming and the current scandal began when news of the latter broke.

"This has been percolating," she said. "When the U.S. attorney firings started coming out, I think people independently starting saying 'Hey wait a minute, if they were firing people for political reasons," there might be evidence of political influence in the jamming investigation too, Sullivan said.

That thought is not new. In 2004, Leahy and Sen. Edward Kennedy wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asking him to stop interfering in the case. Manchester police contacted the Department of Justice about the incident in early 2003.
(snip)

Full speed ahead! Hope there will be a more respectable result this time.

[maddezmom]

4. K&R

:kick:

[heatstreak]

5. K&R

[Shallah Kali]

6. Kick

!

[Auntie Bush]

7. I can't help but wonder how many other cases around the country

were political in nature. 100%? :shrug: