Grand Old Police Blotter: Hush Yo' Mouth Edition

WASHINGTON - The Republican Party says it still has a zero-tolerance policy for tampering with voters even as it pays the legal bills for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to thwart 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.

The Republican National Committee already has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent [sic], a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly.

Dual representation -- where one client pays the lawyer's fees and another client is the ostensible recipient of the lawyer's representation and best counsel -- raises a host of legal ethics issues.

Often, the interests of those financing the representation and those receiving the representation diverge. For example, it may be in Tobin's best interests to negotiate a plea deal where he agrees to cooperate with authorities and provide information about other RNC crimes in exchange for a lighter sentence. It may be in Tobin's best interest to testify at trial, whereas the RNC might prefer for him to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. It might be in Tobin's best interest for W&C not to share his confidences, or the firm's work product/information obtained in its investigation, with the RNC; the RNC might like to know what Tobin and W&C know. Those are all actual conflicts of interest.

I'm confident that W&C would provide full disclosure to both clients and withdraw from representing Tobin in the event of a conflict of interest. They're a preeminent Washington D.C. law firm and have no reason to favor the interests of the RNC over those of Tobin, after all.

Mr. Tobin would be well advised, however, to be wary of geeks bearing gifts.

In the meantime, we eagerly await the American Center for Voting Rights' strongest condemnation of these felonies designed to disenfranchise voters. Or for Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, ACVR Legislative Fund Counsel, to join Tobin's defense team. Whichever comes first.