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After being accused of withholding evidence, prosecutors agreed to drop their objections and allow a 60-day delay in the criminal trial of Associate Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi.

The trial had been set for Sept. 2, but significant issues remain unresolved, including accusations that prosecutors are withholding evidence and manipulating the discovery schedule to disadvantage the defense. The defense is also questioning the role of Attorney General John Formella as the initial investigator in the case. And there is the broader legal question of what, if anything, sitting members of the state Supreme Court can be required to testify to on the witness stand.

On Thursday, Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Martin Honigberg ordered the trial pushed back until at least November. A hearing scheduled for Friday on the defense motion to dismiss the indictments and to disqualify Formella—along with the state’s motion to quash a defense subpoena seeking Formella’s testimony—has been postponed to the week of Sept. 2 under Honigberg’s order.

Hantz Marconi is charged with several counts for allegedly trying to get Gov. Chris Sununu and others to drop the investigation into her husband, former Ports Director Geno Marconi. The most significant charges involve events during a meeting in Sununu’s office last year at which the Republican governor’s lawyer, Rudy Ogden, served as a witness.

This week, Hantz Marconi’s attorneys, Richard Guerriero and Jonathan Kotlier, accused the state of playing games with the evidence. In a filing Monday, they said they have repeatedly requested records of Sununu’s meetings with other judges, similar to his meeting with Hantz Marconi.

Twice the state has claimed no such records exist, and twice the defense has disputed that assertion.

“Nevertheless, the defense believes that the State still possesses the requested material. For example, since October of 2024, the defense has been asking the State to produce records of Sununu’s meetings with other judges or justices. In writing, the State has twice denied possessing such evidence. Yet, the discovery produced by the State indicates that such meetings occurred,” Guerriero and Kotlier wrote.

According to the defense, the state also tried to shield Formella’s role as the original investigator who appears to have initiated the case against the sitting justice—a role they argue violates Department of Justice rules and could make Formella a material witness. Evidence implicating Formella as a potential witness was only recently released, the defense says, and prosecutors have argued it is now too close to the trial to litigate Formella’s alleged conflict of interest.

“The State would like to manipulate the proceedings so that no matter when the defense asserts Formella’s conflicts of interest, there will always be a procedural bar,” Guerriero and Kotlier wrote in a July 21 filing.

Before the delay, the stage was set for an unusual trial likely to feature testimony from a who’s who of state leaders about a murky set of facts. Sununu, Formella, Ogden, New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, Pease Development Authority Chair Steven Duprey, and Associate Justices Patrick Donovan, Melissa Countway, and James Bassett are all potential witnesses.

Both Sununu and Ogden, who is now a Superior Court judge, have said Hantz Marconi did nothing improper or illegal during her conversation last year. Duprey also told investigators he spoke with Hantz Marconi and did not believe she crossed any legal or ethical lines.

Hantz Marconi maintains she was expressing frustration about recusing herself from Supreme Court cases involving the Department of Justice while her husband was being investigated by the Public Integrity Unit of the Attorney General’s Office. How that conversation became a criminal case remains unclear, given statements from Sununu, Ogden, and Duprey denying wrongdoing. It was not known until last month that Formella had initiated the investigation on his own.

Geno Marconi, who has since retired as Ports Director, faces trial in November on charges of illegally obtaining private driving records and sharing them with Bradley Cook. Cook, a fishing boat captain and former chair of a ports advisory committee, also faces charges in the alleged records scheme.

The case against Geno Marconi and Cook is as unusual as the one against Hantz Marconi. Prosecutors say Geno Marconi obtained and shared the car and boat registrations of Pease Development Authority Vice Chair Neil Levesque. However, according to records in Geno Marconi’s case, Levesque was applying for a pier permit at the time and was required to submit copies of his vehicle registrations. Court records indicate Marconi and Cook would have had access to those records in their official roles.

Levesque and Geno Marconi have clashed in recent years over Marconi’s management of businesses operating at Rye Harbor. A civil lawsuit accuses Marconi of targeting the owners of the Rye Harbor Lobster Pound restaurant to benefit his sister, Francesca Marconi Fernald, who operates Geno’s Chowder and Sandwich Shop, a business started by their parents.

Geno Marconi’s seen a lot of fishing expeditions as New Hampshire’s Ports Director. And now, his defenders say, he’s the subject of a new one — from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Public Integrity Unit.

Marconi is charged with a slew of felonies and misdemeanors for alleged criminal acts that the Attorney General’s Office has been reluctant to describe in public. It turns out that they may have initially wanted to charge him with something else.

Rockingham Superior Court Judge David Ruoff disclosed this month that he was questioned by state investigators last year about a 20-year-old criminal case involving Marconi. 

Ruoff was recently assigned to preside over the criminal case against Marconi after Judge Andrew Schulman was transferred to Hillsborough Superior Court — South in Nashua. As a result, Ruoff filed a Rule 2.11 notice with the court disclosing his past encounters with Marconi and his wife, suspended Associate Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi. 

Aside from describing the occasional social gathering, one would expect judges, lawyers, and their spouses to attend. Ruoff’s disclosure contains some interesting history. Two decades ago, Ruoff worked at the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office and was part of the team that prosecuted former Harbormaster Roger Tropf, though Ruoff was not one of the case investigators.

Tropf’s alleged theft was initially spotted by Marconi, who was then the acting Ports Director, according to records in Tropf’s later employment appeal. A state audit of the port operations found widespread problems, leading to the ouster of Ports Director Thomas Orfe and later Tropf. 

Tropf went to trial in 2002 on charges of theft for allegedly submitting fake mileage reimbursement forms. Tropf was later acquitted at trial in May 2002, and Orfe took a deal and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of theft by deception. 

Marconi was suspended in April of last year as the Attorney General’s Office opened its investigation, but no one seemed to know why he was being investigated. Except, maybe Ruoff. Investigators tracked down the judge last spring to discuss the old Trope case, according to the judge’s disclosure.

“More recently, in spring of 2024, I was briefly interviewed by NHDOJ about my involvement in the Tropf/Orf prosecutions. While there were questions about Mr. Marconi’s involvement in the Tropf/Orf prosecutions, the present allegations were not disclosed or discussed. This jurist has no information or knowledge about the pending case, other than what has been generally published in the newspapers,” Ruoff wrote.

The charges the Public Integrity Unit used to finally reel in Marconi last October are not for anything related to Tropf and Orfe. Instead, Marconi’s alleged crime is that he violated New Hampshire’s Driver Privacy Act by providing copies of “confidential records” of one individual known as N.L. to another individual known as B.C.

N.L. is believed to be Neil Levesque, the vice chair of the Pease Development Authority and someone who clashed with Marconi over his management of Rye Harbor for years. B.C. is almost certainly Bradley Cook, the former Chair of the Division of Ports and Harbors Advisory Council, who is also charged with crimes for the alleged criminal mishandling of N.L.’s private records.

But Marconi’s lawyer, Richard Samdperil, writes in a pending motion to dismiss the charges that Marconi did nothing wrong. As the Ports Director, Marconi handled applications for pier use permits. Pier permit applicants are required to submit copies of their car and boat registration with the full application. At the time of the alleged crimes, Levesque was applying for a pier permit, according to Samdperil.

That means it is conceivably very legal for Marconi to have had copies of Levesque’s “confidential” driving records. It would also make sense for Cook, the advisory council chair, to at least be aware of the application. 

And, it now seems likely people in the Attorney General’s Office thought there was potential criminal conduct in the way Marconi handled the 20-year-old case against Tropf and Orfe. Instead, they may now be hoping the whole case isn’t a long walk off a short pier application.

Prosecutors are more than two months late producing evidence against Ports Director Geno Marconi, his lawyers say, and they’ve filed a motion asking the court to force the state to start showing its hand. If not, the attorneys argue, an upcoming meeting on the disposition of the case should be canceled.

Marconi is charged with felonies in a scandal that’s also snared his wife, Associate Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi, as well as a host of other Granite State political heavyweights.

Marconi’s lawyers filed a motion demanding discovery on Dec. 20, writing that the delays are holding up the case. Marconi was indicted by a grand jury in September, and his lawyers asked for discovery on Oct. 17, according to the motion. Marconi pleaded not guilty on Nov. 27.

“Although the pretrial disclosure in direct indictment cases is typically due 45 calendar days after the entry of a not guilty plea by the defendant … it has now been over 90 days since the defendant was indicted and more than 60 days since discovery was requested,” lawyers Richard Samdperil and Joseph Welsh wrote.

But Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman isn’t pausing the case calendar. In an order issued Dec. 31, Schulman wrote that he “assumes” prosecutors are in the process of getting evidence, including any exculpatory evidence, to Marconi’s lawyers. The case is currently set for a dispositional conference on Jan. 14. 

Marconi is charged with two class B felonies – Tampering with Witnesses and Informants and Falsifying Physical Evidence. He’s also charged with four class A misdemeanors – two counts of Driver Privacy Act Violations and two counts of Obstructing Government Administration.

Marconi and Brad Cook, chairman of the Division of Ports and Harbors Advisory Council and a longtime fishing boat captain, are accused of crimes involving leaking information about an unnamed victim to further an unstated motive.

Marconi illegally provided Cook with the confidential driving records of another person, known in the indictments as N.L., according to the indictments. Marconi also is alleged to have deleted a voicemail message in order to hinder any investigation, the indictments state. Cook, for his part, is accused of lying to the grand jury when questioned about N.L.’s driving records.

It is known that Marconi’s bail orders prohibit him from contacting Neil Levesque, a member of the Pease Development Authority Board. It’s also been reported that Levesque, Pease Development Authority Chair Steve Duprey, and the rest of the board met with Attorney General John Formella and Gov. Chris Sununu in April to discuss the emerging criminal investigation against Marconi.

Marconi and Cook both opposed the PDA’s plan to redevelop Rye Harbor to make it more retail friendly, a plan that Sununu supported. 

Marconi was placed on leave in April, after the meeting with Formella. Hantz-Marconi was forced to recuse herself from Supreme Court cases involving the Department of Justice while the criminal investigation proceeded. Frustrated at being sidelined, Hantz-Marconi met with Sununu in July to talk about the investigation interfering with her ability to serve on the court.

That conversation between Hantz-Marconi and Sununu became the basis for the criminal charges against the associate justice. She’s accused of trying to pressure Sununu to drop the investigation, though she strongly denies that is the case. Hantz-Marconi denies she did anything wrong. In court documents her lawyers have filed, it was learned Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald told her before the July meeting with Sununu that there would be nothing improper with the conversation.

The entire Supreme Court has since recused itself from Hantz-Marconi’s criminal case, as well as from her state attorney discipline process.

Add Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, to the list of high profile names involved in the odd scandal surrounding Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi and her husband, Geno Marconi. 

Both Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi and Geno Marconi face criminal charges in a case that’s already roped in Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, Gov. Chris Sununu, and Attorney General John Formella. The biggest mystery involving the Marconis is what, exactly, they allegedly did.

When Geno Marconi waived his arraignment in Rockingham Superior Court last week on his criminal charges, he was ordered to have no contact with Levesque as part of his bail conditions. Levesque is also the Pease Development Authority’s vice chair, the body that suspended Geno Marconi from his job as ports director in April.

Geno Marconi allegedly disclosed the driving records of an individual known as N.L. in court documents, and then later erased a voicemail message regarding those records. Geno Marconi’s codefendant in that case is Brad Cook, the chairman of the Division of Ports and Harbors Advisory Council and a longtime fishing boat captain.

Judge Hantz Marconi is due in Merrimack Superior Court Monday for an arraignment on charges she allegedly abused her office when she tried to get Sununu to intervene in her husband’s pending investigation during a June meeting.

Since she was indicted in October, Hantz Marconi’s lawyers have already filed motions to dismiss the charges, and to get Formella booted from the case. According to her filings, Hantz Marconi sought advice from MacDonald before she talked to Sununu, resulting in the Chief Justice telling her she had a legal right to speak to the governor about her concerns. 

Hantz Marconi wants Formella removed from the case due to his long-standing personal and professional relationship with the government’s star witness, Sununu. Formella was Sununu’s private attorney before becoming legal counsel in office, and then attorney general.

Gov. Chris Sununu likes to tout his pro-business bona fides, but they aren’t stopping him from targeting the wildly popular social media platform TikTok with a lawsuit accusing the company of putting profits ahead of children.

“Our lawsuit alleges that TikTok has shamelessly exploited young users through deceptive design features that foster addiction and endanger mental health. We contend that TikTok knowingly deceived New Hampshire families with false assurances of safety while profiting from the vulnerabilities of its youngest users,” Sununu’s Attorney General John Formella said in a statement announcing the lawsuit, filed in Merrimack Superior Court.

The suit attacks TikTok for allegedly violating the state’s consumer protection statute and other laws.

According to the lawsuit, TikTok uses addictive features to exploit young users’ naivete and ongoing brain development and maximize the time they spend on the platform in the interest of profit. TikTok’s addictive design features make it hard for children to disengage from the platform and lead to a cycle of excessive use, the lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges the company knows excessive use results in profound harm to its young users, including depression, anxiety, and isolation from friends and family. As the company deployed those features, it also lied to parents about the platform’s safety, downplaying the risks posed while touting supposed safety measures that the company knows are ineffective. 

“New Hampshire puts our kids first,” Sununu said. “This lawsuit, combined with our earlier executive order investigating the harms of social media on New Hampshire’s youth is another wakeup call for parents on the dangers that social media presents to our kids.”

New Hampshire filed a similar lawsuit against Meta last year, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. That lawsuit is currently pending.

“This action underscores our commitment to holding social media platforms accountable for their harmful actions to youth. We will vigorously pursue this case to ensure that TikTok is held responsible and that meaningful changes are made to protect our children’s well-being. This lawsuit is just the latest step in our ongoing efforts to ensure that platforms like TikTok operate responsibly and transparently in our state,” Formella said.

 The lawsuit contends TikTok knew it was deploying potentially harmful features on its platform, gathering data on children under 13, exploiting them for money, and even exposing them to online predators.

“New Hampshire’s children are spending increasingly alarming amounts of time on screens. In 2021, over 37 percent of New Hampshire high schoolers reported 5 hours or more of screen time on an average school day. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that unchecked use of applications like TikTok has ‘a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents,’” the lawsuit states.

As more of their hours are taken by TikTok, New Hampshire children are being exposed to child sex abuse images and videos, content that promotes self harm, extreme violent content, and even online social interactions with pedophiles, according to the lawsuit. All this despite assurance the company is doing everything it can to keep kids safe.

“TikTok has long been a haven to incredibly disturbing, gruesome videos, including beheadings, mass shootings, and videos of both suicide and eating disorders. TikTok also knows sexual predators use the App to solicit nude photographs and other photographs from/of children,” the lawsuit states.

Formella wants the Court to enter an injunction requiring substantive changes in how the company operates. He’s also seeking penalties and other monetary relief to address the harms that these practices have caused. 

The attorney general’s investigation of other social media platforms for related practices continues.

TikTok, the controversial social media giant is making billions by trapping New Hampshire kids in a psychologically harmful and potentially dangerous web of endless scrolling, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella.

Want to meet singles? Or maybe collect a debt? How about getting an AI Joe Biden to tell thousands of New Hampshire Democrats to skip voting?

They are the types of services allegedly provided by Texas entrepreneur Ray Monk’s automated phone system company, Life Corporation. On Tuesday, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella named Monk as the man behind the tech that brought the Robo-Biden calls to the Granite State 24 hours ahead of the First in the Nation presidential primary.

Neither Monk nor Life Corporation responded to a request for comment.

Formella sent a cease and desist letter to Monk and Life Corporation, as well as to Texas phone service provider Lingo Telecom, as his office gathers evidence for a possible criminal case.

“We will not tolerate any action that seeks to undermine the integrity of our elections and our democratic process. The message to any person or company who would attempt to engage in these activities is clear, and it’s simple: Don’t try,” Formella said.

The fake Biden calls featured the AI-generated voice of the president telling Democratic voters to skip voting on primary day and instead vote in the November general election.

“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” the Robo-Biden voice said. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

Biden, who was not on the primary ballot, won an overwhelming victory with a write-in campaign. The head of the Democrats’ write-in campaign, former state party chair Kathy Sullivan, says she suspects the calls were an effort to keep self-identified Democrats from voting for Nikki Haley in the GOP primary.

Monk’s company specializes in creating automated calling systems and interactive virtual recordings for call centers. His business is also no stranger to allegedly skirting the law.

Monk’s Singles Telephone company, based in Texas, got in trouble back in 1990 for automated calls to Tennessee residents advertising a dating service, according to Talking Points Memo.

In 2003, the FCC issued a citation against Life Corporation and a host of AKA business entities for unsolicited robocalls. The AKA businesses had names like Confere Dating Game, Psychic Inroads, and Singles Telephone Company.

In the mid-2000s, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (now Texas governor) sued Monk and dozens of automated phone system companies for allegedly ignoring that state’s do-not-call registry.

Monk, 70, won the Fort Worth Inc. Entrepreneurs in Excellence Award in 2021 for the success of his polling business, Pollmakers. The company allows customers to create their own polls, and Pollmakers’ automated phone system then calls up to three thousand people per minute with the questions.

Lingo is the phone service Life Corporation used to get the calls out. Lingo representatives stopped the calls once they were contacted by authorities, though.

Formella said other entities were involved in the RoboBiden calls, but he is not naming them at this time. Those involved in making the calls could face state and federal criminal charges, though Formella conceded such investigations are time-consuming.

Formella’s claim he’s “sending a message of deterrence” to actors who might engage in illegal campaign activity is undermined by his office’s lack of action in another recent case. During the 2020 GOP primary in the Second Congressional District, a Massachusetts-based Democratic marketing firm sent illegal mailings to Republican primary voters. The mail shop doesn’t deny sending the mailers, and its activities were reported to both Formella and the Federal Election Commission. More than a year later, no action has been taken.

Asked about the mail shop case, Formella told NHJournal his office “is taking it seriously, we’re investigating thoroughly, and we’re going to take whatever action we can.”

“It often takes a long time to build a criminal case to get to the point where you can bring criminal charges,” Formella added. “We have a lot of work to do.”