Courts & Corrections

Ports Director Geno Marconi Wants AG To Testify at His Trial Next Month

By Nancy West | October 16, 2025

Courtesy photo

Geno Marconi, the director of the Division of Ports and Harbors of the Pease Development Authority.

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By NANCY WEST, InDepthNH.org

BRENTWOOD – Ports and Harbors Director Geno Marconi’s lawyers have called Attorney General John Formella to testify at his upcoming criminal trial, but the state has filed a motion to quash Formella’s subpoena.

Marconi, 74, appeared at a brief pretrial hearing Thursday morning in Rockingham County Superior Court, which mostly dealt with scheduling issues. Jury selection is set for Nov. 3.

Marconi is accused of two felonies and four misdemeanors for providing Neil Levesque’s confidential motor vehicle records to Bradley Cook, who was formerly chairman of the Division of Ports and Harbors Advisory Council, and of deleting investigation related phone messages.

Levesque is the vice chairman of the Pease Development Authority, which oversees the Division of Ports and Harbors, and the executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. Newly filed court documents show Marconi and Levesque didn’t get along and Marconi believed Levesque was behind the criminal investigation against him.

Bradley Cook of Hampton, who is accused in the Marconi matter of one felony count of perjury and two misdemeanor counts of false swearing, is on the state’s witness list, but not on the defense list. Jury selection for Cook is scheduled for Jan. 5, 2026.

“The State is unaware of what valid basis (Marconi) would have for seeking AG Formella’s testimony, even after speaking with counsel for (Marconi). AG Formella occupies a unique role in the New Hampshire legal system, and he is not a ‘necessary’ witness in this case. Accordingly, the subpoena should be quashed,” according to the motion filed by Assistant Attorneys General Joe Fincham and Dan Jimenez.

“A lawyer is a ‘necessary’ witness if ‘his or her testimony is relevant, material
and unobtainable elsewhere.” State v. Van Dyck, 149 N.H. 604, 606 (2003). “If the evidence
sought to be elicited from the attorney-witness can be produced in some other effective way, it
may be that the attorney is not necessary as a witness. If the lawyer’s testimony is merely cumulative, or quite peripheral . . . ordinarily the lawyer is not a necessary witness,” the motion states.

Formella also fought a subpoena to testify in the criminal case against Marconi’s wife, state Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi, but she pleaded no contest and was found guilty of one non-serious misdemeanor criminal solicitation (misuse of position) charge Oct. 7 ending the case. Hantz Marconi was fined $1,200, faced no jail time, had her law license reinstated and returned to work in a matter of days.

The seven original indictments against Hantz Marconi were dismissed. The new misdemeanor involved her meeting with then-Gov. Chris Sununu about the attorney general’s investigation into husband Geno Marconi that was ongoing at the time in June 2024.

Marconi’s attorneys, Richard E. Samdperil and Joseph Welsh, also filed a motion for the judge to reconsider the denial of their motion to dismiss. And Judge David Ruoff noted there are other motions to be ruled on.

Their motion to dismiss said none of the charges allege that Marconi ever directly accessed or obtained internal records from the New Hampshire Department of Safety, Division of Motor Vehicles so they weren’t confidential records.

Instead, discovery material suggests Levesque or someone acting on his behalf, voluntarily submitted copies of his boat and automobile registrations to the Division of Ports and Harbors for either a pier use permit or a boat mooring application, the motion to dismiss said.

Discovery material also suggests that he never relinquished his actual certificates of registration to the Division of Ports and Harbors, the motion states.

One motion filed by prosecutors seeking to admit a certain type of evidence at trial known as intrinsic evidence, spoke to the disagreement between Marconi and Levesque:

“In October of 2023, during a PDA Ports and Harbors Subcommittee meeting, Levesque confronted (Marconi) about several issues involving an employee conflict of interest and preferential treatment by (Marconi) and others at Rye Harbor. When Levesque reviewed the draft minutes of the Subcommittee meeting, he noticed that there was no record of his interaction with (Marconi) in the minutes. Levesque reraised these issues with (Marconi) and raised the issue of the accuracy of the minutes, at the April 2, 2024, Subcommittee meeting.”

According to the state’s motion: “After this April 2, 2024, confrontation between Levesque and (Marconi) on April 3, 2024, (Marconi) had the following text exchange with (Rye Harbormaster Mandy) Huff:
(Marconi): “Has Neil gotten his pier use permit yet?”
Huff: “Yes”
“Would you like a copy?”
“Revoke?”
(Marconi): “Yes, please. With a copy of the boat reg and fish and game license and his car reg.”
Huff: “Ok”
Defendant: “Covert op.”
Huff then emailed (Marconi), providing the requested confidential documents,” the motion states.

On April 5, 2024, Marconi emailed Bradley Cook copies of those documents attached to an email that read, “Captain Cook, As requested. We can discuss later,” the motion states.

“This evidence concerning (Marconi’s) ongoing interactions with Levesque and (Marconi’s) belief that Neil Levesque was the reason (Marconi) was under criminal investigation is intrinsic to show that (Marconi) purposefully committed an unlawful act ‘in retaliation for anything done by [Levesque] in his capacity as a witness or informant,’ and that he knowingly disclosed confidential motor vehicle records pertaining to Levesque to Brad Cook and did so ‘with a purpose to hinder or interfere with a public servant performing or purporting to perform an official function and/or to retaliate for the performance of such a function,’” the motion states.

Black’s Law Dictionary describes intrinsic evidence as the term given to evidence that is obtained from a written document.

Fincham and Jimenez said in their motion regarding intrinsic evidence: “Other act evidence is intrinsic, and therefore not subject to Rule 404(b), when the evidence of the other act and the evidence of the crime charged are inextricably intertwined or both acts are part of a single criminal episode or the other acts were necessary preliminaries of the crime charged.”

Defense witness list
The defense list includes Formella, Steve Duprey, chairman of the Pease Development Authority, and Neil Levesque, vice chairman of the PDA.

And also the following people:
Lynn Hinchee of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
Paul Brean, Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Greg Bauer, North Hampton, New Hampshire
Karen Conard, Pease Development Authority and City of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, NH
Anthony Blenkinsop, Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Thomas A. Defosses, New Hampshire Department of Justice, Concord, New Hampshire
Stephen Duprey, Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth
Thomas Ferrini, Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth
John Formella, New Hampshire Department of Justice, Concord and Portsmouth, NH
Mandy Huff, Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Stephen P. Johnson, New Hampshire Department of Justice, Concord, New Hampshire
Margaret Lamson, Newington, New Hampshire
Lynn Hinchee of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
Neil Levesque, Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Rodney McQuate, Division of Ports and Harbors, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Cheri Patterson, Durham, New Hampshire
Tracy Shattuck, Division of Ports and Harbors, Portsmouth, New Hampshire