Suspect May Argue White House OK’d Phone-Jamming

Posted on Jul 7, 2006

The guy indicted in the jamming of Democratic phone lines on election day in 2002 is set to argue that his scheme had the approval of both the Republican National Committee and the White House.
If true, this would be huge: a White House-led attempt to sabotage a Senate election in favor of a Republican.

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Senate Majority Project:

According to a recent court filing, indicted phone jammer Shaun Hansen may offer an affirmative defense at his upcoming fall trial, arguing that the phone jamming scheme which his company carried out had the seal of approval of both the Republican National Committee and the White House.

Apparently, Hansen’s defense strategy is not going to focus on whether or not he jammed Democratic phone lines on Election Day in 2002. Rather, his defense strategy will be to persuade a jury that he may have been persuaded not just that the phone jamming was legal, but that he would be carrying out the scheme on behalf of the United States government.

(Far fetched? Maybe not. GOP Marketplace, the firm which brought Hansen into the phone jamming scheme, was owned in part by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. In addition, phone records show hundreds of phone calls from the NH Republican party and convicted phone jammer James Tobin to the White House Office of Political Affairs during the time the scheme was being planned, carried out, and covered up.)

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