When New Hampshire's Bureau of Securities Regulation Mark Connolly announced that he was resigning to become a whistleblower on what he called a "Ponzi scheme" and "state government cover-up," the state Republican party was quick to send out a press release pointing a finger at the state's Democratic governor, John Lynch, in that cover-up. They did so despite the fact that Connolly said that:
“Unfortunately, this report suggests that certain agencies, particularly the Office of the Attorney General and the state Banking Department, did not rise to the challenge when presented with information that clearly demonstrated significant regulatory and other violations at FRM.”
In his report, Connelly argued that the attorney general’s office could have initiated legal action against FRM earlier than it did.
They're not entirely wrong. The governor bears significant responsibility for what happens on his watch, and he definitely bears responsibility for the boneheaded decision to keep Kelly Ayotte as his attorney general and to subsequently reappoint her, positioning her nicely to run for Senate.
But when the NHGOP called for the release of all records relating to the case and called sunlight the best disinfectant, they probably weren't expecting this news:
According to an open records request made by Democratic operative Geoffrey Andersen and obtained by POLITICO, Ayotte’s calendar and e-mail correspondence were removed from the state attorney general’s computer system when she stepped down last summer.
“You requested a copy of General Ayotte’s official schedule from June 1, 2003 to the present. The calendar was removed from the computer system when she left office and thus is not available for public disclosure. Her email correspondence was similarly removed from the system as of her departure date,” wrote Ann Rice, an associate attorney general in the Criminal Justice Bureau, in response to Andersen’s request.
Kelly Ayotte declined to prosecute the case now being aired. When she stepped down from the office she had only months earlier said she would hold for another full term, she apparently had her email and calendars deleted, without the governor's approval. Incompetence, lying, and secrecy -- add those to expressions of hatred like her support of Arizona's anti-immigrant law and Ayotte's definitely got the hallmarks of today's Republican party nailed down.