State GOP tries to block subpoena to phone jamming trial

[Judi Lynn]

State GOP tries to block subpoena to phone jamming trial
By Beverley Wang, Associated Press Writer | November 29, 2005

CONCORD, N.H. --New Hampshire's Republican Party is fighting a federal subpoena for documents from its own investigation of a plot to jam Democratic phone lines on Election Day 2002.

Prosecutors in the case against James Tobin, a former national Republican campaign official, have requested that state Republicans hand over papers and hard drives examined by lawyers the party hired to conduct a 2003 investigation. The documents form a portion of the files Democrats sought but were unable to obtain in a related civil lawsuit.

Tobin, of Bangor, Maine, is scheduled to go on trial in U.S. District Court on Dec. 6, according to the court's most recent information. He has pleaded not guilty to one charge of conspiring against rights, one count of conspiring to commit telephone harassment and two counts of aiding and abetting in telephone harassment.

In 2002, Tobin was political director of the national committee working to get Republicans elected to the Senate. He is accused of orchestrating the phone jamming plot, in which hundreds of computer generated hang-up calls paralyzed Democratic get-out-the-vote and ride-to-the-polls phone lines in New Hampshire for more than an hour on Nov. 5, 2002. That year, in a closely watched Senate race, Republican John Sununu defeated Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent.

Last year, Tobin served as President Bush's 2004 New England campaign chairman, but resigned that October after the phone-jamming accusations surfaced.
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/11/29/state_gop_tries_to_block_subpoena_to_phone_jamming_trial/