Va. GOP chairman pleads guilty, resigns
The Washington Post reports
Virginia Republican Chairman Gary R. Thomson pleaded guilty in federal court today to a misdemeanor for his role in the GOP eavesdropping scandal that rocked state political circles during the past 17 months. Thomson was fined $2,000 and promptly resigned his party post.Under a plea agreement reached with federal prosecutors and ratified by Dohnal, Thomson will be on supervised probation for two years. Thomson faced a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $5,000 fine for pleading guilty to the misdemeanor of "aiding and abetting" the dissemination of the contents of an intercepted Democratic Party conference call in March 2002.
Last month, former Republican Party executive director Edmund A. Matricardi III was fined $5,000 and sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to one felony charge of listening in on the Democratic call.
In court today, Thomson's attorney, Howard C. Vick Jr., told Dohnal that on the morning after the intercepted call, Matricardi showed Thomson his notes of what Democrats had said about a politically important redistricting lawsuit. Matricardi had secretly recorded the call.
The AP story contains this nugget I had not heard before:
The investigation began after officials in the office of Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore, a Republican, alerted the State Police to the transcripts.