The Washington Post has an article today about a topic I’ve written about previously back in August 2005 here and more recently last December here.
James Tobin, you may recall, was President Bush’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England. He was found guilty on two counts of helping to jam New Hampshire Democrats’ phone lines on election day in 2002.
Back in August I was stunned to see that the GOP had already paid for $722,000 of his legal bills. At that time, two other GOP officials had entered pleas of guilty and both had implicated Tobin. It appeared that Tobin had a weak defense. One of the lawyers involved in the case said that Tobin acted under what he believed was proper authorization from others.
Back in December, I wrote:
Now if over $700,000 was spent 4 months before trial — what were his total legal fees? No doubt they exceeded $1 million.
Boy, did I underestimate things.
It turns out that Tobin’s legal fees were $2.5 million. I’m not sure, but as I recall he’s appealing his conviction. If that’s true, it means his fees will go even higher.
Why has the GOP paid his legal bills? As reported in the AP article I quoted back in August:
“Republican Party officials said they don’t ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin’s defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes.”
In today’s Washington Post article, the payment of Tobin’s legal bills is explained this way:
In an interview on ANN, Mehlman said the decision to pay Tobin’s legal fees was made “before I was chairman — that in this case that was going to happen based on assurances he made.” Mehlman stood by the continuing payments under his chairmanship, saying “it was right to honor that decision.”
Hint to Republicans charged with crimes and hoping that the GOP will pay your legal bills: assure party officials that you have done nothing wrong!
The main point of the Post article is that it now turns out that there were 22 telephone calls from New Hampshire officials to the White House on Nov. 5-6, 2002. This is the same time, according to prosecutors, that the phone jamming scheme was going on.
Now the question is being asked — why was James Tobin making all these calls to the White House that day? Was it just to discuss the latest political information in a close race (won narrowly by the republican candidate) — or was it something more?
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