Republican Party Bankrolling Tobin

From the AP:

Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

[Bangor resident] James Tobin, the president´s 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002. [...]

Federal prosecutors have secured testimony from the two convicted conspirators in the scheme directly implicating Tobin. [...]

Since charges were first filed in December, the RNC has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly. The firm´s other clients include Bill and Hillary Clinton and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.

Here is some background on the case. TPM, as always, has more.

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