http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1534As federal probes rack Team Bush in Washington, three huge indictments for money laundering and other pro-Bush election crimes involving Ohio "Coingate" lynchpin Tom Noe have stoked powerful new Watergate-style financial fires under Ohio's stolen 2004 election scandal.
A close associate of key Republicans from George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush to Ohio Senator George Voinovich to Ohio Governor Robert Taft and many, many more, Noe has long been known as northwest Ohio's "Mr. Republican."
He has also been at the heart of speculation on how huge numbers of votes in the Toledo area may have wrongly found their way into the Bush column, helping the GOP again take the presidency in 2004.
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In a widely circulated 2003 fundraising letter, Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell promised to deliver Ohio's 2004 electoral votes---and thus the election---to Bush. O'Dell and Noe are two of Ohio's nineteen GOP Bush Pioneer/Ranger high money donors.
Sworn testimony in the Free Press hearings further confirmed that Diebold technicians were given access to the machines procured by Noe, compromising the Ohio recount, and were allegedly involved in the selection of the precincts to be recounted, in violation of Ohio election law. Ohio requires that precincts be "randomly selected" in a recount.
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