{"id":7932,"date":"2006-07-14T10:44:36","date_gmt":"2006-07-14T14:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7932.html"},"modified":"2006-07-14T10:44:36","modified_gmt":"2006-07-14T14:44:36","slug":"deposing-some-top-republicans-and-not-just-in-the-plame-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/deposing-some-top-republicans-and-not-just-in-the-plame-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Deposing some top Republicans — and not just in the Plame case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the announcement that Valerie and Joseph Wilson are filing a civil suit against top White House officials involved in the Plame scandal sparked speculation<\/a> about the interesting insights to be gained through the [tag]discovery[\/tag] process. But as long as we’re talking about deposing [tag]Republicans[\/tag] in a civil suit, let’s not forget the [tag]New Hampshire[\/tag] [tag]phone-jamming[\/tag] [tag]scandal[\/tag]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A New Hampshire judge yesterday cleared the way for Democrats to question top Republican Party officials — including its former national committee chairman — in connection with a 2002 phone-jamming scheme, as a local political scandal continues to reach into the realm of national politics.<\/p>\n

Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Philip Mangones granted the Democrats’ request to allow depositions of Republican officials. Each subpoena would have to be granted on a case-by-case basis, however. If individual subpoenas are granted, officials will be forced to answer questions under oath about whether they were involved in the plan to tie up Democratic get-out-the-vote hot lines on Election Day 2002.<\/p>\n

“We want to figure out the scope of the conspiracy,” said Finis E. Williams III, an attorney for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “Was the White House involved in this? We’d like to know that. The Republicans have never to this day come forward and come clean and said who was involved in this and who wasn’t.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That hardly seems like an unreasonable position to take. Indeed, I can think of five pretty important questions that Republicans have been avoiding from the beginning.
\n
\n* Why did James Tobin call the White House 12 times<\/a> on Election Day 2002 while he was criminally interfering with an election?<\/p>\n

* Why did the RNC pay Tobin’s legal bills<\/a>?<\/p>\n

* Why did the RNC consult with the White House<\/a> about paying those bills?<\/p>\n

* Why does indicted phone-jammer Shaun Hansen believe his company carried out a scheme that had the seal of approval<\/a> of both the Republican National Committee and the White House?<\/p>\n

* And how is it that Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients donated the almost-exact amount<\/a> of the cost of the phone jamming to the New Hampshire GOP, despite the fact that New Hampshire doesn’t have any federally recognized Indian tribes or Indian gambling?<\/p>\n

Thanks to yesterday’s court ruling, Republicans who’ll have to give [tag]depositions[\/tag] include Ed [tag]Gillespie[\/tag], who was chairman of the RNC chairman at the time; former RNC political director Terry Nelson, now a top John McCain adviser; Chris LaCivita, former national political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and Alicia Davis, who worked in the White House political affairs office under Ken Mehlman, the current RNC chairman.<\/p>\n

I still have a hunch this one could get interesting. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the announcement that Valerie and Joseph Wilson are filing a civil suit against top White House officials involved in the Plame scandal sparked speculation about the interesting insights to be gained through the [tag]discovery[\/tag] process. But as long as we’re talking about deposing [tag]Republicans[\/tag] in a civil suit, let’s not forget the [tag]New Hampshire[\/tag] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}