The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office has cited top state officials — including House Majority Leader Jason Osborne and Karen Liot Hill, the Executive Council’s lone Democrat — with violating state campaign finance laws. The Department of Justice simultaneously announced separate campaign finance sanctions against the House’s deputy majority leader and the political committee run by House Republican leaders.
The flurry of cease-and-desist orders and fines amount to something relatively rare in New Hampshire politics: the enforcement of state campaign finance laws against State House candidates, committees and office holders.
Each case, announced in a press release from the Department of Justice Friday afternoon, also involves individuals who are lighting rods in Concord’s increasingly polarized political environment.
Osborne, who has led Republicans in the House since 2020, was fined $2,000 for failing to file required finance reports for his campaign committee, “Friends of Jason Osborne” during the past two election cycles.
State prosecutors say in investigating a complaint they determined that Osborne, who lives in Auburn, failed to file seven required campaign reports for the 2024 election cycle. In a January 24, 2025 letter, the Attorney General’s office asked Osborne to file the missing reports within 30 days. He didn’t, but on May 9 he provided prosecutors with a spreadsheet showing his committee's “recipes and expenditures between 2022 and 2024.”
Prosecutors say that information confirmed that Osborne should have filed reports for both election cycles. Osborne eventually did so for both elections. But state prosecutors said the time lag was unacceptable and merited sanction.
“[Y]ou filed your reports for the 2022 cycle more than 33 months after they were due, and you filed your report for the 2024 election cycle more than ten months after they were due,” Assistant Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell wrote Osborne, in a cease and desist order.
The order requires Osborne to comply with state campaign finance laws going forward, and to pay a $2,000 fine within 30 days.
Osborne is also cited in the state’s enforcement action against the Committee to Elect House Republicans, the political committee controlled by GOP caucus leaders for which Osborne serves as chairman.
In that cease and desist order, the Attorney General’s Office wrote that a complaint prompted it to seek more information about the committee from Osborne and House Speaker Sherman Packard on January 24, 2025. Subsequent correspondence names House Speaker Pro Tempore Jim Kofalt, who later replaced Packard as the committee’s treasurer.
At issue are what the New Hampshire Department of Justice called “several substantial discrepancies” in the committee’s 2024 campaign finance reports.
According to the committee's filing from November 2, 2022, it held a surplus of $154,025. By its June 8 2023 filing, the committee’s surplus was reported as $67,601, but the missing $86,418 difference was never accounted for in 2024 filings.
According to prosecutors, the committee’s filings also failed to reconcile a $15,491 surplus from a 2023 special election. There were also other issues, including missing finance filings, late filings and filings with “significant revisions.”
Prosecutors noted the committee "voluntarily and diligently worked to correct the issues with its filings, including hiring an accountant.”
However the committee’s “initial failure to timely and accurately report its receipts during the 2020 and 2024 electron cycles is not acceptable,” O’Donnell wrote.
Granite Solutions, the political advocacy group operated by Rep. Joe Sweeney of Salem, the House’s deputy majority leader, was also cited for a violation Friday. The cited conduct in this case, for which Granite Solutions was fined $500, included Sweeney’s failure to file a receipts and expenditure report on September 18, 2024, and file an independent expense report within 48 hours after sending out a campaign mailer unauthorized by any candidate.
The mailer in question, titled “Tim Cahill’s Stolen Valor — A Disgrace to our Veterans,” was, according to the state’s cease and desist order, “allegedly sent out on or around September 7 2024.” And while the mailer disclosed it was “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee,” Granite Solutions failed to file the required independent expenditures report. In the state’s order, O’Donnell wrote that after the state contacted Sweeney in February, he did submit a receipts and expenditures report the following month, and an independent expenditures report in April. But O’Donnell said Sweeney’s conduct still merited sanction, prosecutors determined.
“Although this office appreciates that Granite Solutions promptly filed these overdue campaign finance reports, the organization’s initial failure to file these reports violated campaign finance law and deprived the public of timely access to this information during the 2024 election cycle,” the letter from the Department of Justice reads.
Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, who is in her first term in Concord but who has sat on Lebanon’s city council for two decades, was meanwhile fined $1,000 for failing to “timely file 2024 election reports that excluded improper expenditures.”
According to its cease-and-desist order, the Attorney General’s office first sought “additional information” about Liot Hill’s use of political committee funds in late December 2024.
Prosecutors asked why Liot Hill, a Democrat, had initially filed reports that claimed “certain itemized expenditures,” before later removing them in amended reports. Specifically, they sought to understand why Liot Hill reduced what had been listed as a $3,000 contribution to herself down to $731 in an amended filing, and why she’d claimed spending on clothing and to hire a cleaning company as campaign expenditures.
In February, Liot Hill wrote prosecutors she’d initially claimed expenses tied to registering her car for campaign travel, because she considered the cost of maintaining her vehicle “reasonably a campaign expenditure.” At the same time, Liot Hill acknowledged it wasn’t appropriate to use campaign money to pay for “urgent care, home heating oil, and grocery store items,” which she said had been "inadvertent."
Prosecutors said Liot Hill also acknowledged she’d initially included three expenditures for gifts for campaign volunteers as political expenses because she’d believed they were "promoting the success of a candidate" before later removing them after concluding they were “possibly being considered personal in nature.”
“Outside of a few express statutory exceptions, campaign funds cannot be spent for personal purposes," O’Donnell wrote in the cease-and-desist order. He also warned Liot Hill to file accurate reports in the future, including “recording contributions and loans from yourself to your committee and ensuring that no expenditures are made for personal subsistence.”
