GOP Paying Legal Bills Of Alleged Vote Tamperer

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Bush Official

By JOHN SOLOMON
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 11, 2005; 3:08 AM

WASHINGTON -- 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.

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.