DOJ Sends Cease-And-Desist Letters To Mass. Printer, D.C. Firm Sending Illegal Political Mailers To NH

CONCORD, NH — Voters in New Hampshire are receiving anonymous political mailers tied to the U.S. Senate race, and the state has ordered the company involved to stop sending them immediately.

The New Hampshire Department of Justice Election Law Unit received several complaints in recent days from voters who received three anonymous mailers about the race featuring Republican John Sununu and Constitution Party candidate Edmond Laplante. The mailers, however, do not include information identifying the person or entity responsible for the advertising, known as "paid for" disclaimers required by New Hampshire law. RSA 664:14 requires political advertising to disclose which candidate or committee sponsored the advertisement and whether it was authorized by a candidate or committee, while 52 U.S.C. 30120(a)(3) is a federal law that requires acknowledgment of who or what paid for the political mailer or advertisement.

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The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office confirmed the mailers were produced by Massachusetts printing company the Journeyman Press and distributed through U.S. Mail by the Journeyman Press.

The office also said the mailers were commissioned by Pinpoint Campaigns, a Washington, D.C.-based "boutique direct mail firm." State officials issued cease-and-desist letters to the Journeyman Press and Pinpoint Campaigns ordering them to stop distributing any further political advertising mailers that do not contain the disclosures required by New Hampshire and federal law.

Journeyman Press was also ordered to take all necessary steps to recall or prevent the distribution of further political advertising mailers provided to the United States Postal Service. The company, according to officials, confirmed it had no further mailers scheduled for voters in New Hampshire.

All three candidates on the ballot, Sununu, Laplante, and U.S. Rep. Christopher Pappas, as well as the New Hampshire Democratic Party and New Hampshire Republican Party were contacted and all denied prior knowledge of or coordination with the Journeyman Press or Pinpoint Campaigns in connection with the production of the anonymous mailers.

State officials said the investigation remains active and ongoing.

Illegal mailers in New Hampshire are not a new thing — but swift action by the attorney general's office is.

Neither the state nor the FBI investigated when a political science "voter information guide" was mailed out in 2014 by Dartmouth and Stanford professors to voters in New Hampshire and Montana without a disclaimer. The mailer went out to 15 percent of Montana voters. The mailer was also criticized for using an official state seal and listing the political leanings of candidates running that year. The experiment, according to the article, was roundly "condemned by other researchers in the field as unwise and perhaps unethical."

The political scientists involved in the mailer, Jonathan Rodden and Adam Bonica at Stanford and Kyle Dropp at Dartmouth, both refused to comment for a 2014 story about the mailer, according to the article. Both Dartmouth and Stanford did apologize for the illegal mailer. Montana's commissioner of political practices later found the mailers were illegal due to the appearance of advocacy for specific candidates

Two years later, three illegal mailers were sent to voters across the state, depressing the vote for then-U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and driving votes to Aaron Day, an independent candidate. Those mailers used the same mailer account as the Dartmouth and Stanford professors' voter information guide mailer. They also falsely claimed Ayotte had a low National Rifle Association score (she received an "A" rating from the org) and were made to look like the NRA paid for them — with a sloppily pasted logo.

Ayotte loss the race in 2016 to then-Gov. Maggie Hassan by 1,017 votes while Day received 17,742 votes.

Neither the state nor the FBI investigated the issue, despite complaints filed and requests for inquiry.

But in 2022, Reynolds DeWalt, a direct mail printing company in New Bedford, Massachusetts, admitted to sending mailers to influence the outcome of the Republican primary, touting Bob Burns as the most pro-Trump candidate over Keene Mayor George Hansel, the AG's Office got involved. Democrats believed Burns would be a weaker candidate, due to his support of Trump, against then-incumbent U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster.

Kuster easily won by more than 36,000 votes.

In August 2024, the attorney general's office announced the direct mail firm involved in the CD-02 GOP primary scheme, Deliver Strategies of Arlington, Va., agreed to pay a $40,000 fine, even though the election damage was already done.

In November 2024, anti-Republican mailers and "Republicans for Harris" signs also lacked a disclosure notice.

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