RALEIGH -- Mike Blanton, once Meg Scott Phipps' spokesman and loyal aide, told a crowded courtroom Tuesday that he helped his former boss cover up her role in campaign finance violations.

Blanton said he and former Agriculture Commissioner Phipps, along with Phipps' campaign treasurer Linda Saunders, planned the lies they would tell to the press, to the state Board of Elections and to FBI agents.

The three of them agreed to "stick to the story that the commissioner had little or no knowledge of her campaign finances," Blanton said.

Blanton was the final prosecution witness in Phipps' state trial on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. His testimony bolstered what several other witnesses have said over six days, as Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby laid out his case that Phipps lied under oath about her 2000 campaign's illegal fund raising and that she schemed to cover up her role.

Blanton is one of three former Phipps aides who pleaded guilty to crimes related to the investigation and agreed to testify against her.

He might also be called to testify against Phipps in federal court, where she is charged with 30 corruption counts. That trial is scheduled to begin next month.

On Tuesday, Blanton described two meetings that are key to the prosecution's case against Phipps. In one meeting, Phipps found out about her campaign's illegal activity; in another, she conspired to cover up that activity, prosecutors say.

Blanton testified that he was in the room at the first meeting, in January 2000, when a representative of the New Jersey carnival company Amusements of America told Phipps that her campaign was paying off a debt for a former political rival, and that the loan she was paying off had originally come from Amusements of America.

The rival, Bobby McLamb, ran against Phipps in the primary, then joined her campaign and helped her raise money from his contacts in the carnival industry. The Phipps campaign's payments on McLamb's debt were never reported as required by state law and constituted an illegal political contribution, state elections officials say.

As commissioner, Phipps oversaw the N.C. State Fair. Just hours before the meeting with the Amusements of America representative, she had given the company the contract to run the midway at the 2002 fair.

At the second meeting in April 2002, Blanton, Phipps and Saunders met at a North Raleigh condominium and plotted to hide the debt payments from a News & Observer reporter, Blanton testified. The reporter had asked for copies of the Phipps campaign's canceled checks.

Phipps and Saunders decided that night to white out the loan numbers, which were written on the memo lines of some checks, so the reporter wouldn't know that they went to pay McLamb's debt, Blanton said.

Phipps gave the same doctored checks to the Board of Elections while it was investigating her campaign.

And in June 2002, Phipps told the Board of Elections under oath that she didn't know her campaign was paying off McLamb's debt and said she was "shocked" to hear the debt was originally financed by Amusements of America.

Before the Board of Elections began its hearings, Blanton said he was part of several meetings where Phipps and Saunders concocted a story that would protect Phipps. He said Phipps pressured Saunders by warning her that they could both lose their jobs if Phipps was charged with a crime.

"The general consensus was that the story would be that all the financial dealings were between Linda and [Phipps' husband] Robert," Blanton said.

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