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Calling herself “the top Dem” in state government, Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill (D–Lebanon) has been using her official position to recruit plaintiffs for a potential lawsuit against New Hampshire’s newly enacted voter ID law, and directing them to a high-profile Democratic law firm in Washington, D.C.

In emails sent from her official Executive Council account and obtained by NHJournal, Liot Hill refers potential plaintiffs to the Elias Law Firm. That’s the same Marc Elias who helped Hillary Clinton fund the research used in the now-debunked dossier behind the Russia collusion hoax.

While Liot Hill’s actions may or may not be illegal, critics point out that she’s trying to help a Washington, D.C., law firm sue the state of New Hampshire—which could cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars—while serving as one of New Hampshire’s fiscal watchdogs.

“This is astonishingly bad judgment from a member of what effectively serves as our state’s board of directors, ignoring her fiduciary duty to our citizens and taxpayers in favor of shameless partisan hackery,” a New Hampshire attorney who does business before the Executive Council told NHJournal on background. “Sad.”

The Elias Law Firm that Liot Hill is helping is notorious for its aggressive—and expensive—legal tactics on behalf of Democratic clients and causes, such as opposing voter ID requirements.

“I am writing to ask for your help,” Liot Hill wrote. “SB 287 was recently signed into law. This is a bill that will make it harder for people to vote in New Hampshire by forcing every absentee voter to provide a copy of an acceptable photo ID—or appear in person before a clerk or a notary—each time the voter requests an absentee ballot for any election.

“I am working with some folks who are trying to identify voters who will be impacted by SB 287, and I was thinking that this may affect older folks/mobility-challenged individuals,” she wrote to Chuck Saia, executive director of the Governor’s Commission on Disability.

“Would you be willing to have a call with Tina (copied on this email, contact information below) to talk further?” Liot Hill added.

“Tina” is Tina Meng Morrison, the Elias Law Firm attorney copied on each email. Morrison’s contact information appears immediately above Liot Hill’s official Executive Council email signature.

Other emails obtained by NHJournal had nearly identical messaging and were sent to:

• Lisa Beaudoin, Strategies for Disability Equity

• Donnalee Lozeau, Community Action Partnership of Hillsborough and Rockingham counties

• Isadora Rodríguez Legendre, The Developmental Disabilities Council

• Olivia Zink, Open Democracy

Unanswered in the emails: Liot Hill’s financial relationship with the law firm. Is the Executive Councilor being paid or receiving any remuneration for her work? Has the Democratic law firm donated to her campaign? Neither Liot Hill nor Meng Morrison would say.

In fact, Liot Hill declined to respond to any questions from NHJournal, which she described in her email to Meng Morrison as “a Republican online news source.”

“I’m the top Dem in state govt in NH, and they are always attacking me,” Liot Hill complained. “I’ve stopped responding to them. I am also interested to know who forwarded my email to them.”

Liot Hill sent NHJournal’s request for comment to the attorney, to which Meng Morrison replied, “Thanks for forwarding. If you could ignore this email for any comment, that would be much appreciated.”

If she is getting paid, Liot Hill’s email campaign is ethically murky. Elected officials in New Hampshire are governed by different sets of rules. Members of the executive branch, like Liot Hill, have fewer restrictions than state legislators.

But murky finances are part of Liot Hill’s history.

According to her campaign disclosures, the Lebanon Democrat has spent thousands in campaign cash on meals, clothes, and visits to salons during the 2024 race. Her campaign expenditures included a $190 ferry ride to the Hamptons and $181 to register her car, as well as repairs around her home.

This year, she has already been reimbursed for tens of thousands of dollars in travel and other costs, despite not facing the voters again until next year.

“It should come as no surprise that Karen Liot Hill is involved in another unethical scandal. She previously misused campaign dollars; now we come to learn that she’s electioneering with taxpayer dollars,” New Hampshire GOP Chair Jim MacEachern said. “It’s shameful that she is still in her position. Granite Staters deserve better.”

Elias Law Group founder Marc Elias is a heavy hitter in the Democratic Party. He was the DNC lawyer from 2009 through 2023 and served on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. His firm represented the Democratic mail shop that sent illegal mailers into New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District’s GOP primary in 2022. The mail shop eventually agreed to resolve a New Hampshire Attorney General investigation with a three-year agreement that included payment of a $40,000 fine.

Elias told The New Yorker in 2021 that his firm “represents only clients who meet at least one of three criteria: they must be Democrats or an organization that helps Democrats win elections; they are bringing cases that challenge laws that restrict voting; or they are a progressive group that meets the values of our firm.”

Executive Councilors John Stephen and Dave Wheeler, both Republicans, attended an Americans for Prosperity – New Hampshire event Wednesday night discussing the role of Executive Councilors in state government. Neither would comment on their colleague’s actions, but Wheeler did acknowledge that if the state is forced to hire outside counsel to deal with an Elias lawsuit, that contract would come before Liot Hill and the Executive Council for approval.

“I don’t know any of the circumstances,” Stephen said of Liot Hill’s emails. “But I think the law is a great law, and I’m so proud that the legislature passed the law to show proof of identity and citizenship and residency in order to vote.”

Attorney General John Formella announced Thursday that Londonderry Times publisher Debra Paul has been convicted on five counts of violating state law on political advertising.

However, Formella has yet to announce any charges — or any enforcement actions at all — over hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal political mailers sent into New Hampshire by a Democrat mail shop to interfere in the Second Congressional District GOP primary.

Paul, 64, could get up to a year in jail on each count and faces up to $2,000 in fines for each conviction. She will be sentenced in the Derry District Court later this month. She failed to properly label political ads running in her papers.

Judge Kerry Steckowych issued the verdict Thursday following last month’s bench trial. 

Paul repeatedly broke the law in the run-up to the 2022 municipal elections when she published ads for local political candidates and warrant articles in her small, local weeklies, the Londonderry Times and the Nutfield News, according to testimony at last month’s trial.

Paul’s attorney, Tony Naro, said his client never intended to be a criminal. She made repeated efforts to follow the instructions she got from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office but failed to meet the letter of the law.

“Her intent is abundantly clear. Her intent was to comply with the law,” Naro said in his closing argument. Paul simply struggled to understand how to do so, he said.

According to Naro, every advertisement used by the prosecution to bring the charges is clearly a political ad for school board candidates, town council candidates, and warrant articles. Paul’s crime was she did not make sure to have the words “paid political advertisement” in each ad she printed. Many were labeled “paid advertisement” or “advertisement.” 

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Conley argued at trial that Paul couldn’t claim ignorance after she was repeatedly warned for prior improper ads.

Paul’s political ads were the subject of multiple reports to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office over several years. She got warning letters in 2019 and 2021 about how she was publishing ads, and the 2021 letter informed her that if she broke the law again, she could face prosecution. 

According to testimony at trial, Paul was dealing with cancer when she struggled to handle the ads in early 2022. Paul operated the two newspapers with one employee, her husband, Chris Paul. Naro said the mistakes she made during the 2022 municipal election season were not intentional.

In the wake of the charges, Paul had to shut down the Nutfield News, Naro said.

The Democratic mail shop in Massachusetts that barraged Second Congressional District mailboxes with illegal ads, Reynolds Dewalt, has not been shut down. Nor has it been charged with a crime, despite its admission that it sent Democratic-funded mailers with no disclosures of any kind to voters during the 2022 GOP primary.

The anonymous mailers pushed GOP voters in the 2nd District away from moderate Keene Mayor George Hansel and toward MAGA Republican Bob Burns.

One piece featured a photo of Burns with a headline reading “I Stand With Trump” on one side and declaring him “100 Percent Pro-Trump” on the other. The mailer claimed Hansel was not. Another mailer asked, “Who Stands With Trump?” and made it clear the answer is Burns, not Hansel.

Burns would go on to win the primary, beating Hansel by 1,800 votes. Burns then got thumped in the general election by incumbent Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster.

Formella told NHJournal last week the case is a high priority in his office and that he has worked on it personally. Asked why more than a year had passed without any action, Formella declined to answer other than to say working across state lines slows down the legal process. And Formella denied Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, a partisan Democrat, was anything other than cooperative.

Still, as the Republican gubernatorial primary heats up — a high-profile race the Democratic Governors Association has already declared a priority — Granite State political operatives have noticed the difference between the treatment of Deb Paul and Reynolds Dewalt.

“She doesn’t have Marc Elias on her speed dial,” one New Hampshire attorney quipped.

Reynolds Dewalt has a long history working for Democrats and is represented by attorney Marc Elias. He has done work for the Democratic National Committee since 2009, as well as the presidential campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

In August 2022, a Massachusetts mail shop represented by Hillary Clinton’s attorney dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal mailers into the New Hampshire GOP primary in the 2nd Congressional District. The mailers, which violated state and federal law, were part of a $44 million national Democratic strategy to interfere in GOP primaries.

More than 14 months later — and with the 2024 GOP primary season approaching — New Hampshire’s top cop has taken no action, even as Democrats eye the Republican primary for governor. And critics say if they can do it illegally and without consequence, why not?

The facts of the case aren’t in dispute. In the final weeks of the 2022 Republican primary in the 2nd Congressional District, voters were hit with a wave of political mailers promoting Bob Burns as the most Trump-friendly candidate in the race. The mailers also accused his mainstream GOP competitor, Keene Mayor George Hansel, of not supporting the former president — a key issue to Republican primary voters.

Anonymous campaign mailer touting Bob Burns, sent by a Democratic mail shop in Massachusetts.

The mailer worked. Hansel, viewed as the strongest Republican to take on U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster and endorsed by Gov. Chris Sununu, was defeated by underfunded MAGA candidate Burns. Kuster handily defeated Burns 56-44 percent in November.

However, as NHJournal reported at the time, those mailers were sent to GOP primary voters not by New Hampshire Republicans but by Reynolds DeWalt, a Democratic political mail shop based in New Bedford, Mass., that has printed products for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Voters had no way of knowing that because the illegal mailers had no disclosures of any kind, a clear violation of state and federal election laws.

Yet more than a year later, no charges have been filed, and no actions have been announced by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella or any other law enforcement agency. And while the state Republican Party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in September 2022, the agency declined to answer any questions about whether or not an investigation is even underway.

Granite State Republicans fear the lack of enforcement means even more illegal Democratic campaign material will pour into the 2024 primaries, particularly for governor.

Formella claims his office is actively investigating the mailers, telling WFEA radio host Drew Cline in a recent interview that he is on the job.

“That [case] remains under active investigation; I’ve spent a fair amount of time on it myself because I feel it’s important,” Formella said. “The challenge is when you’re trying to investigate across state lines, getting subpoenas domesticated, getting documents, getting people to sit for interviews, it takes time. My goal is to take the strongest action possible.”

One obstacle may be the mail shop’s legal counsel, notorious Democratic operative Marc Elias, who has worked for the Democratic National Committee since 2009 and also worked for the presidential campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris. However, Elias is best known for helping his client, the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, fund the now-debunked “Steele Dossier” promoting the so-called “Russia Collusion” hoax.

Plus, any federal investigation would involve the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, which may lack motivation to take down political actors inside the president’s own party.

And then there is the Massachusetts problem.

Sources tell NHJournal that any New Hampshire investigation involving out-of-state political mischief by Bay State players would go through the office of progressive Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Campbell’s partisan activism is no secret; she is viewed as a rising star in the Democratic Party. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office is often used as a springboard for higher office. Current Democratic Gov. Maura Healey launched her gubernatorial campaign after winning her second term as attorney general.

Campbell’s ability to influence an investigation creates, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest. Formella’s office declined to say what kind of cooperation it is getting from Massachusetts officials, if any. Campbell’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Democratic Party’s strategy of promoting weak Republican candidates in GOP primaries in 2022 paid off, particularly in New Hampshire. In the 2nd District race, Burns spent less than $16,000 in primary ads, while the Democrats Serve PAC spent $562,000 boosting his candidacy to GOP voters.

In the U.S. Senate race, MAGA Republican Don Bolduc’s ad spend was an anemic $33,760. But Democrats spent more than $3 million helping him defeat former state Senate President Chuck Morse. Bolduc lost to the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Maggie Hassan, by nine points.

Burns has spoken publicly about entering the GOP gubernatorial primary, where Morse and former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte are already running. Even if he doesn’t, it is possible a Trump win in the presidential primary contest would inspire a MAGA Republican to enter the race and represent the activist base of the party. And thanks to Democrats, that MAGA candidate might not need to raise a penny to mount a competitive race.

Thus far, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office has done nothing to prevent that. Instead, Formella is already hinting his office may take no action at all despite the clearly illegal conduct of the Democrats.

“My goal is to take the strongest action we can,” he told Cline. But he added that, “at a minimum, we will issue reports to the public about exactly what happened.”