Posted on 03/30/2002 11:59:54 AM PST by Maedhros
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:33:05 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
RICHMOND, Va.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Now, did I violate the law? We never denied there was anyone else on the call?
Can't anyone do this? With a Mother Theresa type on call with a notepad?
DITTO !!!!!
"A Democratic legislator provided the Republican Party of Virginia's executive director the information he needed to join two Democratic conference calls discussing redistricting, two GOP sources alleged yesterday.
...If the password used by Matricardi to join the conference calls was provided by a participant, he could not be charged, legal sources said. If he obtained the password surreptitiously, he could be charged with a felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Gail Nardi, spokeswoman for the House Democratic Caucus, said she had no idea how Matricardi obtained the password.
GOP sources said the Democrat who allegedly passed the information to Matricardi reportedly was angry with Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner... "
Mar 29, 2002
GOP Sources Accuse A Rival
A Democratic legislator provided the Republican Party of Virginia's executive director the information he needed to join two Democratic conference calls discussing redistricting, two GOP sources alleged Friday.
The executive director, Edmund A. Matricardi III, who is the target of a police probe into possible criminal conduct, hired lawyer Steven D. Benjamin yesterday. Benjamin said Matricardi is cooperating with investigators.
"We are confident that once the investigation is completed, all interested parties will agree that there was no impropriety," Benjamin said.
If the password used by Matricardi to join the conference calls was provided by a participant, he could not be charged, legal sources said. If he obtained the password surreptitiously, he could be charged with a felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Warner is losing it fast.
Warner's Peacemaking Leaves Fellow Democrats FumingGov. Mark R. Warner's handling of the redistricting hot potato has stirred a backlash among fellow Democratic leaders who were already seething about his accommodating ways toward Virginia's majority Republicans. Continue at the WP.
Aman Pour:_ Oh yes SIR....but I have crush on you GEN .... .....
LOL..
Getting the conference call number and password is often easy: sometimes it is posted on a Web site. Do a Google search for "confernce call" and "password" and see how many calls you could break into. Often, the calls are recorded for people who missed the live call, and security for these recordings to be played back is even easier to break. The participants have long since forgotten they said anything of importance.
Not that I have ever done such a thing to my competitors.
I agree, Matricardi showed very poor judgment. I can't say I would single out conservatives, however, for knuckle-headed operations.
Mar 30, 2002
Embattled GOP chief proud to be `Last Partisan Left'
BOB LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ Sometime around 3 a.m. on Nov. 7, the telephone rang in the dark, empty office of Edmund A. Matricardi III at state Republican Party headquarters. His answering machine recorded the message.
On the other end of the line were Democratic partisans in a hotel room three blocks away who, on cue, let loose with a boozy, sing-song taunt to Matricardi, rubbing in the fact that Democrat Mark R. Warner hours earlier had won the election for governor.
Matricardi, the state GOP executive director, said he listens to that tape most every day, feeding an abiding disdain he has for Democrats. ``It keeps me going whenever I feel like I don't need to work so hard,'' Matricardi, who routinely puts in 12- to 16-hour days, said in an interview earlier this year.
State Police want to know whether Matricardi took his zeal too far and illegally eavesdropped on a Democratic Party telephone strategy session.
Investigators are focusing on whether Matricardi gained access to the March 22 conference call surreptitiously, or whether he was effectively ``invited'' in by a legitimate participant who provided him with the telephone number and access code.
Authorities hope to reach a conclusion sometime this week.
Republicans rushing to Matricardi's defense this weekend say a disaffected Democrat freely provided the information, a circumstance that would make it legal for Matricardi to monitor the call that involved about 30 Democrats, including senior lawmakers and Warner.
Democrats said the incident smacks of Watergate and demanded Matricardi's immediate firing.
On the advice of his lawyer, Matricardi is not speaking publicly.
Matricardi is a driven partisan and proud of it. He has little patience for Republicans who flirt with the enemy.
Warner came to power pledging to find common cause with the Legislature's Republican rulers, and he appointed former Lt. Gov. John Hager and former state Sen. Jane Woods, both Republicans, to his cabinet. Matricardi played nice.
After House Speaker S. Vance Wilkins, Senate President Pro Tem John H. Chichester and other senior Republicans joined Warner on Jan. 22, in a show of bipartisan solidarity in building a state budget with revenues $3.8 billion short of projections, he shook his head.
``This is sad. I'm the last partisan left,'' he said.
Matricardi, 33, knew Republican politics was for him from an early age. He gleefully recalls how a homeowner went into a tirade when, as a child, he left campaign literature on a doorstep as he canvassed a neighborhood for a Republican candidate.
``I thought to myself, 'This is so cool. I get to make grown-ups mad and not get in trouble for it,''' he said with a laugh during an interview in 2000.
Matricardi remained in politics even after he obtained his law degree, working on Jim Gilmore's successful 1997 campaign for governor and serving in his administration after that. In 1999, with Gilmore's backing, he was appointed state GOP director.
Since then, the Republicans won their first majority ever in the House of Delegates and former Republican Gov. George Allen handily unseated Democratic U.S. Sen. Chuck Robb, another former governor who had led a Democratic Party renaissance in the 1980s.
Matricardi also showed he can play rough. In June, Matricardi showed a reporter 30 hefty, white three-ring binders, each about three inches thick and packed with opposition research into Warner.
``I live for this stuff,'' he said at the time. ``People say this is negative, but as long as you're talking about his positions and his record, I think that's fair. It's not like we're going around talking to old college girlfriends and things like that,'' he said.
Some of that research yielded a brochure produced and paid for by the state GOP that labeled the Democratic ticket Warner headed as ``the most liberal in Virginia history'' and suggested that the ticket supported marriages for gay couples. Democrats rebutted the claim and denounced the ad, as did Ann Earley, the mother of Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Earley.
Last year, before the annual political Labor Day parade and picnic in Buena Vista, Matricardi spent a sleepless night putting thousands of Republican candidates' yard signs along the parade route, then guarding them through the night from rival Democrats.
Even so, Matricardi's personal affability have won him friends in both parties.
``Ed is a good partisan,'' Mo Elleithee said in a telephone interview Saturday. He was press spokesman for Warner last year and Robb in 2000 before being hired in December to manage Janet Reno's campaign for governor in Florida.
``With him, you're either with him or against him. He and I have gone toe-to-toe and we disagree on everything political, but personally I've always found him a very likeable and fun guy,'' Elleithee said.
Matricardi approaches every day as a political battle, Elleithee said. ``I think in a lot of cases, that serves his party well, but I also think from time to time, on both sides of the aisle, you can go too far,'' he said.
Mar 31, 2002
Matricardi hopes for resolution
Eavesdropping probe discomfits both partiesBY TYLER WHITLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
An eavesdropping investigation continued to reverberate through Virginia politics yesterday, as Democrats wondered whether a traitor was in their midst and Republicans debated the fate of their executive director.
The Virginia State Police and Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney David M. Hicks are investigating an allegation that the state GOP executive director, Edmund M. Matricardi III, listened in on, then taped, two conference calls by Democratic legislators.
If he did so without permission, he could be guilty of a felony.
Matricardi's lawyer, Steven D. Benjamin, said the GOP official committed "no impropriety," an indication that Matricardi feels he had proper access. Two GOP sources said a Democratic legislator made the password to the conference calls available to Matricardi.
But Del. Kenneth R. Plum, D-Fairfax, former chairman of the state Democratic Party, said Matricardi clearly was not invited to participate.
"No one knew he was there, and, if they had, the call would have been terminated," he said.
The conference calls, set up by the House of Delegates and Senate Democratic caucuses, were made on March 22 and Monday.
At least 30 Democrats, plus Gov. Mark R. Warner and two aides, participated in the March 22 call, in which le- gal strategy on a redistricting case was discussed. Redistricting also was the subject of the second call.
Participants, once they had used a code to gain access to the conference call, were not asked to identify themselves.
Democrats sued to overturn a Republican-authored redistricting plan adopted last year by the General Assembly. A Salem circuit court judge, Richard Pattisall, recently ruled that the plan was unconstitutional because of racial gerrymandering and noncontiguous districts. He ordered new House of Delegates elections in November, a year ahead of schedule.
Under the districts that he overturned, Republicans gained 12 additional seats in the House of Delegates, increasing their majority to 64.
Republican Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore immediately said he would appeal the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court.
It was Kilgore who blew the whistle on Matricardi.
In a statement issued by his office Friday, Kilgore said, "My office received information about possible misconduct regarding the taping of a telephone conversation."
Kilgore said he turned the information over to the state police, who, on Wednesday, searched Matricardi's office at the state GOP headquarters at 115 E. Grace St. in Richmond for possible tapes, notes or transcripts of the telephone conversations.
Because Kilgore's office is handling the redistricting appeal, some Democrats wondered yesterday whether he might have to recuse himself . They argued that he or lawyers on his staff may have had access to the Democratic legislators' legal strategies through the information obtained by Matricardi.
Tim Murtaugh, Kilgore's press secretary, said the information did not find its way to any lawyers on the Kilgore staff.
"The attorney general's office is in no way affected," he said. "It is fully capable of exercising its role in the redistricting case."
Meanwhile, the normally loquacious Matricardi referred calls to his lawyer.
"I hope this will be resolved soon," he said.
Executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia for three years, Matricardi worked in the policy office of the Gilmore administration before becoming political director of the state GOP in 1999.
He also is a lawyer. Ron Klain, the Democrats' redistricting lawyer who participated in the March 22 conference call, suggested that Matricardi's eavesdropping violated a lawyer-client relationship. However, other lawyers said that too many people listened in on the call to support an argument for confidentiality.
Vestiges Of Unity Vanish in Va. Flap
Telephone Case Highlights Rift Among DemocratsRICHMOND, March 30 -- The Republican eavesdropping scandal that rocked Virginia politics last week vaporized what little cooperative spirit remained between the two major parties, while underscoring the immense leadership challenges facing Gov. Mark R. Warner within his own Democratic ranks, according to activists on both sides.
While important in its own right, the criminal investigation of state GOP director Edmund A. Matricardi III for listening in to a Democratic conference call also sent aftershocks through two partisan organizations that had made modest gestures toward collaboration, party leaders and other experts said.
For Republicans, who take pride in the professionalism that guided them to dominance in state politics, the investigation of their party's senior staffer for a possible felony offense was an acute embarrassment, many said. Some GOP elders called for Matricardi's resignation, but state Republican Chairman Gary R. Thomson resisted that, noting that Matricardi has not been charged criminally.
Continue at the WP
Apr 01, 2002
GOP director meets with prosecutor, police Monday
BOB LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ State Republican Party director Edmund A. Matricardi III met Monday with prosecutors and investigators who are determining whether he illegally monitored a Democratic telephone conference call late last month.
Law enforcement officials said Matricardi was interviewed by representatives of Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney David Hicks and State Police investigators. No details of the meeting were available
Matricardi referred reporters to his attorney, Steven Benjamin.
``Law enforcement officials now have all the information necessary to complete their investigation,'' Benjamin said late Monday afternoon. ``Mr. Matricardi has done nothing wrong and we expect the authorities to reach the same conclusion.''
No announcement was expected in the case until later this week. State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Monday the investigation still in progress.
Republicans insist that Matricardi was effectively invited to monitor a March 22 conference call involving about 30 Democrats, including Gov. Mark R. Warner, the party's legislative leaders, some of their staffers and lawyers for the party.
Part of the discussion involved strategy for handling the appeal to the state Supreme Court of a ruling last month in Salem Circuit Court that the 2001 GOP-authored legislative redistricting plan was racially gerrymandered and unconstitutional. Republicans want the ruling overturned and the districts upheld; Democrats want the court to affirm the lower court ruling.
If Matricardi received the telephone number and password needed to join the conference call from a legitimate, authorized participant, he is likely in the clear, according to law-enforcement officials. The issue becomes more complicated, however, if he recorded the call and distributed the recordings.
State GOP Chairman Gary Thomson said Monday that Matricardi remained in his job as the party's executive director, a post he has held since 1999. He declined to discuss Matricardi's future with the party because it is a confidential personnel matter.
Matricardi had told party leaders long before the incident that he planned to leave, and job descriptions for the executive director's position were sent to select candidates.
Democratic officials downplayed the possibility that a mole within the party provided Matricardi with the number and password, and that even if criminal charges are not brought, Matricardi _ who is a lawyer _ could face professional and civil problems.
Del. Franklin P. Hall, D-Richmond, said Matricardi listened in on two calls _ the March 22 call involving Warner and another the following Monday in which the governor did not participate.
Hall, the House Democratic leader and a lawyer by trade, alleged that Matricardi violated the Democrats' confidential attorney-client relationship. He said that at the start of the calls, an announcement was made that the participants would be discussing privileged legal plans and that only specifically authorized legislators, staffers and their attorneys could listen.
``Even if someone did give it (the access information) to him, it does not matter. What he did was wrong,'' Hall said. ``He violated the attorney-client privilege.''
Warner, in his first day back at work Monday after vacationing with his family in Colorado last week, declined to make a public statement about the case.
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On the Net
Republican Party of Virginia: http://www.vagop.com/
Democratic Party of Virginia: http://www.vademocrats.org/
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