The Gordian Knot

There’s a two-day gap I can’t stop thinking about.On July 29th, the Judicial Conduct Committee quietly filed formal misconduct charges against retired NH Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi. On July 31st, sitting Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald announced — with zero explanation, effective immediately — that he was taking medical leave.Maybe that’s nothing. Institutions have unglamorous, boring reasons for their timing all the time. But I’ve spent the last few weeks in court filings, sworn testimony, and public records, and “nothing” is not the word I’d reach for anymore.Here’s what I found sitting quietly in a legal filing nobody outside a courthouse has read closely: on October 23, 2024, under oath, Hantz Marconi stated she told MacDonald she planned to meet with then-Governor Sununu about her husband’s criminal investigation — and that MacDonald raised no objection. Two months earlier, MacDonald told AG investigators, with his own attorney present, that the meeting was “news to me.”Both statements are sworn. Both are on the record. Both cannot be true.Nobody has ever been asked to reconcile them.That’s the loose thread that pulled this whole episode into being — and once I started pulling, the knot kept getting bigger. A retired justice’s own admissions about a ten-minute meeting with a sitting governor. A $50,000 payout an HR professional of thirty years called, under oath, “basically almost” fraud — right before she was fired for reporting it. A hearing, finally, scheduled for December. And a money trail running from a 2017 ballot campaign straight up to a mysterious communications contract signed the same week the walls started closing in.This is not a story about certainty. I don’t know, definitively, who’s telling the truth in that contradiction — and I’m not going to pretend I do just to give you a satisfying ending. What I do know is that in a state small enough for everyone to sit on the same commissions and answer to the same handful of names, the people meant to police each other rarely do.So I did it instead. Receipts over vibes. Every time.In this episode:— The full, documented timeline behind Justice Hantz Marconi’s formal charges— The sworn contradiction between MacDonald and Hantz Marconi that no one has investigated— Sworn HR testimony on the Dianne Martin payout, quoted directly— The money trail — Marsy’s Law, and a fresh contract worth asking hard questions about— What’s actually on the calendar this December, and why it matters to every person in this state, not just the ones with law degreesThe JCC hearing on Justice Hantz Marconi is set for December 7–9, at One Granite Place in Concord — open to the public. Mark it down. I’ll see you there.As always: everything here is sourced to court filings, sworn testimony, and public records, cited as we go. Where something’s still unconfirmed, I tell you so directly — that’s not a hedge, that’s the whole point of doing this job honestly. Listen to the full episode below. And if you’ve got documents, tips, or a thread you think I should be pulling — you know where to find me. Get full access to The Gracie Gato Podcast at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe