Former Republican operative James Tobin has been indicted for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the bureau's investigation of a phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire in 2002, according to court filings examined by TPMmuckraker.

Details to follow...

Update: Here's the indictment. It contains two counts, both related to making false statements to the FBI during its investigation into the New Hampshire GOP's effort to jam the phones of the Democratic Party on Election Day 2002.

It charges, in part:

"Tobin stated that when he first called Allen Raymond to discuss the phone-jamming scheme, Raymond and Charles McGee had already spoken with each other about the plans. In fact, as Tobin well knew, Tobin spoke with Raymond before Raymond was contacted by McGee, and Tobin requested that Raymond assist McGee with the plan."

McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, and Raymond, a GOP consultant, both were convicted and served jail time in connection with the scheme.

But Tobin's own 2005 conviction relating to the scheme was thrown out on appeal in 2007, and he was acquitted.

Dane Butswinkas of the Washington law firm Williams and Connolly, who is representing Tobin, declined to comment when reached by TPMmuckraker. The Republican National Committee has in the past paid for Williams and Connolly's defense of Tobin.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was accused earlier in his federal corruption trial of throwing his wife under the bus. ("When it comes to things in and around the teepee, the wife controls," his lawyer told the jury to explain his client's ignorance of VECO's billing.) Yesterday, lawyers wrangled over the prosecutors' demand for more of her documents. We'll hear from the lucky lady herself later in the week. (AP)

Tight races seem to attract lawsuits. The latest example comes from Washington, where two former Democratic justices have subpoenaed GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, in a suit against the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW), which spends heavily on GOP candidates. The justices, who are supporters of Democratic governor Christine Gregoire, want to prove that BIAW coordinated illegally with Rossi's campaign in planning spending on his behalf. Rossi, who lost his 2004 bid to Gregoire by 133 votes, and is in a tight re-match with her with this year, says the suit is intended to keep him off the campaign trail. Mailed ballots must be in on Friday, the same day he's been called in to testify. (AP)

A California paper has obtained documents relating to the purchase by top McCain contributor Donald R. Diamond, an Arizona businessman and D.C. lobbyist, of part of a former Army base, valued at $7.2 million, while McCain served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Turns out Diamond shelled out $250,000 and walked away two years later with $18 million. The story follows up on an earlier New York Times report, which suggested that McCain's willingness to smooth the way for well-connected constituents didn't disappear after the Keating Five scandal. The 80-year-old Diamond explained to the Times that he wanted a return on his investment: ""I want my money back, for Christ's sake. Do you know how many cocktail parties I have to go to?""(Santa Cruz Sentinel)

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Rep. Tim Mahoney held a press conference this morning, apologizing for the embarassment his actions have caused his family and denying he violated his oath of office or any laws.

"I would have come forward earlier but making sure my family is ok is far more important than any political career," Mahoney said, accompanied by his wife. "I have not violated my oath of office, nor have I violated any laws, and I consider this to be a private matter."

Mahoney also re-emphasized his request for a House Ethics Committee investigation and his belief that he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

"I think the people of my District know that I am a fighter," he said. "I am not going to allow this story coming out 20 days before an election to change my resolve to serve the people of the 16th Congressional District."

Full text of press release after the jump.

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In a filing today with the U.S. District Court, Sen. Ted Stevens' defense team listed four witnesses that it may call today. Among them, Orrin Hatch, Martha Stewart and the seven term senator himself.

Senator Stevens hereby gives notice of the witnesses he intends to call on the fourth day of his case-in-chief, and the exhibits that he may seek to introduce during testimony.
1. Orrin Hatch
    Exhibits: None
2. Donna DeVarona
    Exhibits: None
3. Martha A. Stewart
    Exhibits: None
4. Theodore F. Stevens

It's not an absolute certainty, but it's worth letting you, our readers, know that Uncle Ted may soon be taking the stand.

It's a good thing.

Mere hours after ABCNews.com reported that Rep. Tim Mahoney had agreed to pay $121,000 to a former mistress and Congressional staffer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for an ethics investigation into the allegations.

"I just learned today about the serious allegations concerning Congressman Tim Mahoney," Pelosi said in a statement released last night. "These charges must be immediately and thoroughly investigated by the House Ethics Committee."

Mahoney, a Democrat who won the seat of disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley, called for an ethics investigation of himself last night.

The media consultant team working with Rep. Tim Mahoney on his re-election bid, has severed its relationship with the junior congressman, after allegations surfaced this morning that he agreed to pay $121,000 to a former Congressional staffer and mistress after she threatened to sue him.

In a strongly-worded press statement released this evening, Fletcher Rowley Chao Riddle Inc. (FRCR) CEO Bill Fletcher terminated his firms relationship with Mahoney's campaign.

"As of today, FRCR, Inc. has resigned from Tim Mahoney's campaign and permanently ended our relationship with him," the statement reads. "According to ABC News, Tim Mahoney apparently included our company in a secret legal settlement without the knowledge of our firm. . . If these allegations are true, Tim Mahoney's actions are unacceptable and not in line with FRCR's business ethics."

The "secret legal settlement" Fletcher refers to, is the promise of a new job for Mahoney's former congressional staffer: a 2-year position at FRCR. Fletcher denied to ABCNews and in the statement today ever agreeing to such a deal.

Shortly after ABCNews.com's article, Mahoney issued a statement calling for an ethics investigation of the matter.

Just hours after ABCNews.com reported that he had agree to pay $121,000 to a former staffer and mistress, Rep. Tim Mahoney issued a statement asking the House Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation, The Hill reports.

The Democrat who won the infamous Mark Foley's seat in Florida, didn't exactly deny the charges.

"I am confident that when the facts are presented that I will be vindicated," Mahoney said in a statement released this afternoon.

"I was notified this afternoon about a story that ran on ABC News' website reporting allegations about a former employee," Mahoney stated. "While these allegations are based on hearsay, I believe that my constituents need a full accounting. As such, I have requested the House Ethics Committee review these allegations."

As the Republican furor over ACORN and voter fraud continues to heat up nationally, there are two local developments in Democratic counties in swing states that are worth noting.

In Lake County, Indiana, where the GOP has already tried to prevent the opening of early voting sites in minority areas, the secretary of state has now asked the state attorney general and federal prosecutors to investigate ACORN for voter fraud.

Secretary of State Todd Rokita wrote a letter to fellow Republican, AG Steve Carter on Friday, stating that he had received "secured credible evidence" of voter fraud perpetuated by ACORN, the AP reports.

"There looks to be some felonious actions taken here," Rokita said to reporters. "I think the message to the voters and taxpayers of this state is that we're watching, and we're not going to tolerate the kind of behavior in the state."

ACORN responded on Friday saying that they themselves had "identified approximately 2,100 cards in Lake County that we believe were problematic."

"We are the victim here because we have identified the problem, and now certain interests are turning that information against us," Brian Kettenring, a spokesman for ACORN said.

And Lake County isn't the only Democratic stronghold in a swing state to be targeted with voter fraud accusations. The bipartisan Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, a county which contains Cleveland, held hearings today and voted unanimously to ask the county prosecutor to investigate multiple registrations of individuals registered by ACORN, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Four people were subpoenaed in front of the board this morning, testifying that they had been asked to register multiple times by ACORN solicitors.

Katy Gall, the ACORN director for Ohio, said that they had cooperated with the investigation and would terminate the employment of anyone found soliciting multiple registrations.

No charges have been filed against ACORN in either state and in Indiana, the attorney general has yet to respond to Rokita's request Friday for an investigation.

It's worth taking a moment to step back from the slew of charges leveled over the last week at ACORN, the community-organizing group that Republicans and the McCain campaign have been trying to turn into a bogeyman for fears about vote fraud (and, of course, tie to Barack Obama).

The GOP has accused ACORN of submitting fraudulent voter registration forms numbering in the hundreds or thousands, in battleground states including Ohio, Indiana, Nevada, and Missouri.

But the most important point that's getting lost in the Fox-generated hysteria is that, according to voting experts, even when fraudulent voter registration forms are submitted, they virtually never lead to fraudulent votes being cast. Richard Hasen, a law professor at Loyola and an authority on voting law, wrote in a 2007 op-ed published last year in the Dallas Morning News and noted recently by TPM, that "the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible," because of the sheer logistical challenges it would require to carry out on a large scale.

In many states, ACORN is required by law to turn in all the forms it collects, though the law differs from state to law, according to experts.

ACORN has consistently said that it flags suspicious forms for election officials. Indeed, in Nevada where last week an ACORN office was raided in an investigation headed by the Secretary of State, ACORN was already cooperating with authorities.

According to a statement from the group which has not been disputed by state officials, in July, ACORN set up a meeting with county elections officials and the Secretary of State's office to urge them to take action on information ACORN had provided. Since then, "ACORN has provided officials with copies and--in some cases--second copies of many of the personnel records and the 'problem card packages' and cover sheets with which we originally identified the problem cards."

It's also worth noting that similar allegations were made against ACORN in the last few election cycles, and several investigations were conducted, none of which found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Many of these were conducted by US attorneys, who were pressured by GOP political figures to investigate the issue, then fired after they failed to come up with sufficient evidence.

So as the GOP campaign to make an issue out of ACORN continues -- and we'll be keeping you posted as it does -- remember that the number of fraudulent votes that will be cast in November as a result of the group's voter-registration activities is close to zero. But the number of valid voters who could potentially have obstacles placed in their way of voting, as a result of the Republican campaign, is far larger.

Is the West Palm Beach congressional seat prone to sex scandals, or is it just us?

Congressman Tim Mahoney, the Democrat who replaced disgraced representative Mark Foley, agreed to pay a former mistress -- who was also a staff member -- $121,000 after she threatened to sue him, ABCNews.com reports.

From The Blotter:

Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said.

A Mahoney spokesperson would not answer questions about the alleged affair or the settlement, but said Allen resigned of her own accord and "has not received any special payment from campaign funds."

. . . The affair between Mahoney and Allen began, according to the current and former staffers, in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising "a world that is safer, more moral."

Later in the article there's this kicker:

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign, the Mahoney staffers said.

Late update: Later in the article, there's a transcript and a recording of Mahoney firing Allen. It's pretty damning.

"The only person that matters is guess who? Me. You understand that. That is how life really is. That is how it works," Mahoney can be heard yelling on the call to Allen.

Listen to the audio below. Full transcript after the jump.

Click To Play

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The Trooper-Gate report found that Sarah Palin violated a state ethics law and abused her power by pressuring subordinates in trying to get Mike Wooten fired. So what happens next?

In terms of official actions, maybe nothing, at least in the three weeks between now and November 4th.

If Palin were to be prosecuted for violating state law, the state attorney general would likely take the lead. But Attorney General Talis Colberg -- who until Palin plucked him from obscurity to make him the state's top lawyer was a Matanuska Valley assemblyman and private-practice lawyer -- has been criticized for appearing to represent the governor's interests in Trooper-Gate, rather than the public interest. So a prosecution led by the AG's office seems unlikely.

Of course, the state personnel board is continuing its own probe of the affair, with which Palin has been cooperating. The board has the authority to impose fines or even recommend impeachment for violations of the ethics act. But the board's members are appointed by the governor, calling into question its ability to draw independent conclusions.

Still, it has hired Timothy Petumenos -- an aggressive Anchorage lawyer, and a Democrat -- to investigate. Newsweek reports that Palin is scheduled to sit down with Petumenos next week, and his findings could be released soon after. "We took a gamble when we went to the ethics board," a McCain aide told the magazine.

Before the report was released, the idea had been floated that the legislature could institute impeachment proceedings. But since Friday night, that possibility appears to have receded. According to a TPM source who attended Friday's session of the legislative council, State Senate President Lyda Green, an outspoken Palin critic, replied with a flat 'no' when asked, after the report's release, whether impeachment was being considered.

And Green told the Christian Science Monitor over the weekend that even a censure motion is unlikely, since the legislature is not currently in session.

Walt Monegan, whose firing as public safety commissioner was at the center of the affair, declined to say whether he was considering filing suit against the administration, when asked this morning on NBC's The Today Show. But the report concluded that Palin was within her rights in firing him, since, as governor, she can fire any executive branch official for any reason.

So it may be that whatever impact Trooper-Gate has on the presidential race will be based on the findings released Friday. If nothing else, the fact that Palin was found by a legislative investigation to have broken a state ethics law will only further complicate the McCain campaign's flagging effort to present her as reform-minded advocate for a more open, honest approach to governing.

Prosecutors in the case against Sen. Ted Stevens are leaving no stone unturned, subpoenaing emails sent from his wife Catherine which may have discussed the home renovations which are at the center of the charges against Stevens, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Though the subpoena was sent Sept. 15 to Catherine Stevens' law firm, it was made public over the weekend when the defense asked a judge to intervene, calling it a "fishing expedition." The law firm had already turned over 26,000 pages of documents, but declined to turn over communications between Catherine and her husband Ted, citing spousal privilege.

On the subpoena, the government seeks the correspondence between Catherine Stevens and 34 other people. Some of those names are new, and related to evidence not yet discussed in the trial -- like the name of Anchorage jeweler George Walton and his Alaska Gold and Diamond, Co. Any documents relating to diamond earrings are also requested in the government's subpoena.

So as we head into the fourth (and possibly final) week of Stevens' trial it seems like we may have more to look forward to besides the possibility of Stevens' himself testifying and the defense's parade of illustrious character witnesses.

It's fair to say that Trooper-Gate hasn't exactly burnished Sarah Palin's reputation for honesty. And in a conference call she gave Saturday to respond to the legislature's report on the affair released Friday night, that reputation took another hit.

Palin opened her remarks by declaring:

I'm very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

But of course, it's simply untrue that the report cleared Palin of legal wrongdoing or unethical activity.

Steve Branchflower did conclude that Palin was within her rights to fire Walt Monegan -- since, as governor, she can fire any executive branch official for any reason.

But he also concluded, just as definitively, that Palin pressured and intimidated subordinates in trying to force the firing of Mike Wooten. In doing so, Branchflower wrote, she violated a state ethics law which says that "any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action" is a violation of the public trust.

When an Anchorage Daily News reporter followed up by reminding the governor of this finding, she did not respond directly.

(Below is the audio from the call, preceded by some video footage from over the weekend of Palin calling the Trooper-Gate inquiry "a partisan kind of process.")

In the call, Palin also asserted that the inquiry "did turn into a partisan circus" -- perhaps forgetting that it had been launched through a unanimous vote of the bipartisan legislative council, and that the council voted unanimously again on Friday to release the report to the public.

And asked how she felt about having called Walt Monegan, a widely respected public servant, a "rogue", she replied: "'Rogue' isn't a negative term."

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) really had a bad day Friday. Not only was she found to have abused her gubernatorial powers in a legislative report on the Trooper-Gate scandal, but she was also ordered by an Alaskan Superior Court judge to preserve her private emails until a lawsuit demanding the emails be made public is resolved. (Anchorage Daily News)

A Louisiana state senator pled guilty Friday to one charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Derrick Shepherd (D) gave a weepy apology for helping Gwendolyn Joseph Moyo launder $141,000 in checks. Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) who is also accused of unrelated bribery and racketeering, made an appearance in Shepherd's indictment as an unidentified co-conspirator. (AP)

Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) is taking heat for a tax payer financed trip he took to Alaska in 2004. Sununu claims he took the trip in order to attend a field hearing for the Senate Appropriations Committee, which he was not even a member of. While in Alaska, after attending the hearing, Sununu took the time to go on a fishing trip hosted by none other than Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). (Nashua Telegraph)

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Aside from what it says about Sarah and Todd Palin, the Trooper-Gate report also appears to paint Mike Tibbles -- the governor's former chief of staff, who's now running Ted Stevens' Senate re-election campaign -- as shockingly incompetent. And that's the best case scenario for Sarah Palin.

To explain: Steve Branchflower writes on page 113 of the report that Walt Monegan told him about a conversation between Monegan and Tibbles, shortly after Palin was inaugurated as governor in January 2007. According to Monegan, Tibbles asked Monegan to consider hiring Chuck Kopp, formerly the police chief of Kenai, for a job in the public safety department.

As a result, said Monegan, he met with Kopp. When Monegan asked Kopp whether there was anything in Kopp's background that Monegan should be aware of before hiring him, Kopp revealed that, as Kenai police chief, he had been reprimanded over a sexual harassment allegation, though he maintained that it was bogus.

Monegan told Branchflower that the next day, he talked to Tibbles. "I disclosed what Chuck had told me," said Monegan. Tibbles responded that, in that case, they had "better steer clear from [Kopp] for a while."

But in a separate part of the report (page 43) that we noted earlier, Branchflower writes that in July 2008, Kopp was hired as public safety commissioner -- replacing Monegan -- after being interviewed for the job by two Palin aides for just 30 minutes, and without speaking directly to the governor about it at all.

Just two weeks later, Branchflower writes, Kopp resigned the post, when the sexual harrassment reprimand surfaced. Adds Branchflower: "Apparently, that was a fact that the governor's office did not know about when Mr. Kopp was offered the commissioner's job."

Indeed, at the time, the governor's office said publicly that at the time Kopp was hired, the governor knew of the allegation but understood it to be baseless, and was unaware of the letter of reprimand.

But the report suggests that Tibbles -- who, just four days before Kopp's hiring, was announced as Stevens' campaign manager -- did know about the reprimand, because Monegan had told him about it back in January 2007.

In other words, if Branchflower is correct, Tibbles failed to pass on to his colleagues in the governor's office his knowledge of Kopp's reprimand, setting them up to hire for a high-profile position a man with a significant black mark on his record.

It's also possible, of course, that Branchflower has erred in writing that the governor's office didn't know about Kopp's reprimand when it hired him. Perhaps Tibbles did pass along the information, but Palin and her aides, in their haste to find a replacement for Monegan, decided to overlook it and hire Kopp anyway, trusting that the issue would not resurface.

Tibbles did not immediately respond to a detailed request for comment.

So either Palin's chief of staff was jaw-droppingly incompetent, or she knowingly hired as the state's top law enforcement official a man who had been reprimanded for sexual harassment, then lied to the press about it. Neither alternative is flattering.