Donald Trump’s campaign is famously frugal, but it has given a sizable chunk of money to a direct-mail and printing outlet led by a former New Hampshire operative who served seven months in prison in connection with an Election Day phone-jamming scandal.
Trump’s campaign has spent more than $20,663 with a company called Spectrum Marketing Companies since May 2015, according to the Federal Election Commission. The company’s main point of connection with political candidates is Charles “Chuck” McGee. Earlier this year, McGee told reporters the Trump campaign had worked with Spectrum on advertising for events, printed handouts and large signs.
MORE: Trump Asks Broke Chicago Schools for a Tax ‘Refund’
In 2002, McGee, now vice president of political and corporate communications at Spectrum, was the executive director of the New Hampshire GOP. Federal prosecutor Todd Hinnen later testified that “McGee envisioned and developed the [phone-jamming] plan, ‘recalling a lesson learned during his military service, that the best way to disrupt the enemy’ is to cut off his ability to communicate,” the Union Leader reported.
To pull this off, under McGee’s leadership, the New Hampshire Republican Party paid $15,600 to Alexandria-based firm GOP Marketing, which in turn engaged an Idaho telemarketer called Milo Enterprises.
MORE: ‘Fat Activist’ Fauxmanist Preemptively Blocks all Conservatives on Twitter
On Election Day 2002, the telemarketing firm launched a computerized assault on five Democratic Party offices and the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association, calling and hanging up more than 800 times, interrupting get-out-the-vote efforts for about an hour and a half.
The New Hampshire Democratic Party chair later called the attack “more than a dirty trick,” adding that it was “a serious crime.”
Confronted by local reporters, McGee initially lied, saying he had not hired GOP Marketing. But in 2005, after a federal investigation, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for his involvement in the phone-jamming scheme.
MORE: Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Wants to Spiritually Advise Trump
After McGee had finished his time in federal prison, he went to work at Spectrum, where president Richard Pease said he would “work with candidates in any way they want. If they want his advice, if they want his … experience, it’s there for them to take or leave,” according to a 2006 Washington Post article.
The Cruz campaign briefly used Spectrum, too, spending $195 for a one-time printing job in April 2015.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street as a fellow for the Steamboat Institute.
