The Republican National Committee has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded not guilty, a team of lawyers from Williams & Connolly, a Washington law firm whose other clients have included Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton.
Republican Party officials said they don't ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed they had agreed to underwrite Tobin's defense because he was a longtime supporter and he assured them he had committed no crimes.
''Jim is a longtime friend who has served as both an employee and an independent contractor for the RNC," RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said Wednesday. ''This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing."
A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close Senate race that day.
At the time, Tobin was the RNC's New England regional director, before moving to President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
A top New Hampshire Party official and a GOP consultant have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Tobin's indictment accuses him of calling the GOP consultant to get a telephone firm to help in the scheme.
''The object of the conspiracy was to deprive inhabitants of New Hampshire and more particularly qualified voters . . . of their federally secured right to vote," states the latest indictment issued by a federal grand jury on May 18.
The Republican Party has repeatedly disavowed tactics aimed at keeping citizens from voting since allegations of voter suppression surfaced during the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election. Earlier this week, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director, reiterated a ''zero-tolerance policy" for any GOP official caught trying to block legitimate votes.
Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean questioned Mehlman's commitment to the policy.
''This is just another example of his say-one-thing, do-another strategy," Dean said yesterday. ''Ken Mehlman tells crowds his party is against voter fraud and intimidation, while in the back rooms he supports Republican officials who engage in these dirty tricks."
