The $3 Million Crank Phone Call Just Got More Expensive

by emptywheel

I pointed out a few weeks ago that there is simply no way the GOP would spend $3 million to defend the NH phone jammers unless there was more to it than just a third rate crank phone call.

Does that seem rather like overkill to you? $3 million dollars for an offense--telephone harassment--with a maximum sentence of two years?

Yeah, seems like overkill to me too.

Well, I suspect GOP efforts to cover-up the "more to it" part got more expensive last week. Via TPMmuck, the NH Dems want to depose the people mentioned in the criminal trial with ties higher up the food chain. People like Ed Gillespie, former GOP chair, and the guy who got approval from the White House before he invested that $3 million in covering up the "more to it" part.

Unfortunately, the civil trial takes place too late (November) to have a substantive effect on the election. But as I suggested several weeks ago (and as Karl's presence in NH last week might support), once we tie these state-based cases involving election fraud directly to the national Republican party, we will make progress in demonstrating the fundamental corruption at the core of the conservative movement.

Comments

[William Ockham]

emptywheel,

You're on a roll today. There's a thread that ties together your three posts today. It's a common theme of 'politics as usual' morphing into blatant criminality at all levels of government.

[vachon]

Hmmm. Putting it that way, I smell RICO Act all over this thing.

[Murph]

As I read, at the end of "$3 Million Crank Phone Call", the words "corruption at the corp of the conservative movement", I flashed back to the seventies accusation that protesters were either commies or dupes of commies or desired socialist government.
A long way to say conservative Americans are decent and did not expect the crud to float to the top (instead of the cream). I feel the dawning is painful for them and bars many from an awareness of the depths they been dragged to.
Murph