Barbour Had Controlling Interest in Phone Jamming Firm

Last Friday, the AP reported that GOP big-wig Haley Barbour was one of the investors in GOP Marketplace, the consulting firm central to the New Hampshire phone jamming.

But a closer read of the company’s founding documents shows a much deeper connection than Barbour admitted to the AP. He had direct control over the company’s management. And a look at the timeline of the company’s founding shows that it was something of a pet project for Barbour and his partners.

According to the Operating Agreement for GOP Marketplace, which the people at the Senate Majority Project were nice enough to share with us, there were two classes of stock in the company, each with equal power. HELM Partners, an investment company formed by Haley Barbour, Ed Rogers, Lanny Griffith of the lobby shop Barbour, Griffith, and Rogers, and Edward Mathias of the Carlyle Group, owned one class. The other was composed of Allen Raymond, the President of the company currently in prison for his role in the jamming, and its co-founder Tommy Hopper, formerly the Southern Director of the RNC under Barbour.

Each class had a “manager.” The managers, Ed Rogers and Allen Raymond, respectively, were responsible for making the company’s “major decisions,” according to the agreement.

Raymond, as President of the firm, handled the day-to-day operations. But it is simply not true, as Barbour’s spokesman told the AP, that “None of the creditors had any role in the management or activities of the company.”

The terms of the agreement show that Raymond’s firm was essentially subsidized by Barbour and his partners at HELM. Despite the fact that HELM had put up almost $250,000 and Raymond only $11,700 in start-up capital, Raymond retained a whopping 66.5% stake in the firm. And as Barbour’s spokesman admitted, “the loan was not fully repaid.”

Furthermore, HELM Partners seems to have been formed solely for the purpose of funding Raymond’s firm. According to the certificate of organization, GOP Marketplace was formed May 19, 2000, just days before HELM was formed on June 1st, 2000, Virginia corporation records show. There is no evidence that HELM ever invested in another company. Ed Griffith, still listed as the registered agent for HELM, didn’t return our call for comment.

Now, none of this necessarily means that Barbour and his high-powered buddies at HELM (see their profiles at Senate Majority Project for just how high-powered) necessarily knew about the jamming, which in the grand scheme of things was a rather small bit of business for GOP Marketplace. But it does mean that Barbour’s position that he had nothing to do with Raymond after he helped launch the company is rather dubious. It’s understandable why he’d want that to be true – since Raymond can be traced to at least two very dirty tricks.