Former Congresswoman Annie Kuster, former state Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy, and state Rep. Mary Hakken-Phillips said the Republican Senate candidate owes voters answers about the 2010 Doha event referenced in the Epstein emails.
Former Congresswoman Annie Kuster and two other prominent New Hampshire Democrats called on John Sununu to “come clean” about any ties to Jeffrey Epstein, days after The Washington Post reported the Republican Senate candidate’s campaign admitted his on-camera denial of ever visiting Doha, Qatar was false.
Kuster told reporters Sununu “was telling an egregious lie” when he answered “No” in March to an on-camera question about whether he had ever been to Doha, a trip she noted takes roughly 20 hours by air.
“This is not a flight that you might forget,” Kuster said.
Sununu has made that trip twice, traveling to Doha in 2001 as part of a congressional delegation and again in May 2010, when he attended the same World Economic Forum summit that Epstein and his associate Boris Nikolic discussed in emails released this year. Kuster said Sununu never publicly disclosed the 2010 appearance, which surfaced when the Post pointed to a photo of him in the forum’s own report on the event.
In those emails, released by the Department of Justice in January, Nikolic sent Epstein a list of attendees for the Doha event and asked whom he should meet. “John Sununu, has good stories,” Epstein replied, without specifying whether he meant the candidate or his father, former Gov. John H. Sununu.
The released messages do not show that either man met or communicated with Epstein or Nikolic, and when The Granite Post asked the campaign about the mention in February, a spokesman called the allegation “a complete fabrication by someone proven to be a compulsive liar.”
Kuster said Sununu used his father to intentionally muddy the waters over which of them was the subject named in the Epstein files.
He should have come forward at the time and said, ‘No, no, that was me in Doha at the World Economic Forum.’”
State Rep. Mary Hakken-Phillips, a Grafton County Democrat, said that when Sununu was last in office, he “voted to serve corporate special interests like Big Pharma, big oil and Wall Street.” Since leaving the Senate, she said, his wealth “has grown by as much as $35 million,” a figure Democrats have previously tied to his personal financial disclosures.
She said Sununu has taken “nearly $70,000 in campaign contributions” from wealthy donors whose names surface in Epstein-related material, naming Charles Schwab, Marc Rowan, Stephen Schwarzman, and John Paulson, and describing a network of “Epstein elites” who trade favors and access. “Granite Staters deserve to hear the whole truth from Sununu, not another lie,” she said.
Former state Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy said it took nearly six months after the files’ release for Sununu’s attendance at the Doha event to come out. “That’s a critical piece of information that Sununu should have been open and honest about from the outset,” she said, calling his conduct “dishonest and disappointing.”
Sununu, she said, should answer whether he ever met or communicated with Nikolic “in Doha or elsewhere” and detail the extent of any ties to Epstein and those close to him. “After he kept quiet for months, why should voters trust a single word that comes out of his mouth?” she said.
Soucy noted the criticism has come from both sides of the aisle. She said Scott Brown, Sununu’s Republican primary rival, has pressed him on the emails for months, “called Sununu out for lying” after the Post story, and “doubled down on the radio” Monday.
Sununu’s campaign has dismissed the attacks. In a statement to the New Hampshire Union Leader after the Post story, spokesman Mike Schrimpf called the Democratic response “a disgusting and baseless smear campaign” and repeated that neither Sununu nor his father ever met or communicated with Epstein or Nikolic.
With less than two months until the September primary, public polling shows Sununu with a wide lead over Brown, and he is expected to face Congressman Chris Pappas, the leading Democrat for his party’s nomination, if he advances to the general election.
Kuster said the questions Sununu faces are straightforward. “Just tell us, what were you doing in Doha? Why were you at the World Economic Forum? Who did you meet with?” she said.
“If you had nothing to hide, this would not be a tough story.”
