By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

Connecticut Watchdog's On the Horn Radio/TV News Hour available globally via Internet interviewed me Feb.22 about the consumer implications of my recent column "Spy vs. Spy As Hackers Square Off Over DC Dirty Tricks." The story describes how hackers associated with WikiLeaks exposed a plot by private security contractors to disrupt the computers and social networks of political targets around the United States. Watchdog Publisher George Gombossy, at left below, and contributor Denis Horgan led the questioning. On the Horn Producer Brian Parker provides

Tune in by clicking here for the show, which is available by archive, maintained by network founder Brian Parker, right.  On the show, I disclosed a major new story not yet published anywhere in North America regarding a group effort by major Swedish newspapers to censor reader comments critical of that nation's prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The story is significant because the average reader typically has scant resources to determine why a comment is not posted on a specific website. In Sweden this week, however, Dr. Marcello Ferrada de Noli undertook an investigation and just published his results.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director's Blog

In a major setback for the U.S. Justice Department and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a federal appeals court last week dismissed federal bribery and conspiracy charges against two New Jersey Democrats targeted in a trap set by Christie. The decision helps illustrate why our non-partisan Justice Integrity Project has repeatedly pointed to the 46-defendant “Bid Rig III” case as one of the nation’s most scandalous political prosecutions of recent years.

On Feb. 17, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Christie’s successors wrongly applied a 1946 federal bribery law when they convicted Jersey City mayoral candidate Louis Manzo and his campaign manager (and brother) Ronald in an elaborate sting that Christie, at right, set in motion before he resigned in 2008 near the end of the Bush administration. The three-judge appeals court upheld the pre-trial ruling of the defendants’ trial judge that prosecutors wrongly charged the Manzos under the Hobbs Act. The appellate judges said authorities have never previously used the law to win convictions against a candidate unelected to office. Judge D. Michael Fisher, a 2003 Bush appointee, wrote the unanimous decision. Democrats Thomas L. Ambro and Marjorie O. Rendell, wife of just-retired Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, concurred. The judges traced the history of language in the Hobbs Act through what they called “centuries” of common law in the Anglo-American system. That review convinced them to decline prosecutors’ request that the court expand the law enough to cover candidates such as the Manzo brothers. The ruling thus upheld a decision last spring by U.S. District Judge José L. Linares, a 2002 Bush appointee. Louis Manzo is at left,below.

The ruling delivered yet another courtroom loss to federal prosecutors who are trying to vindicate the partisan methods that the Republican Christie used as New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney from 2001 through 2008 on his way to his state’s governor’s mansion campaigning as a crime-fighter and reformer. But the loss by New Jersey's federal prosecutors of their last two jury trials in the case is unprecedented during the past decade, according to an Associated Press report in the state's newspapers. Among the reasons, their chief witness Solomon Dwek committed a $50 million bank fraud and ran a brothel before the government supplied him with vast amounts of taxpayer money to try bribe local politicians and persuade rabbis to launder funds. Moreover, Dwek has had to admit on the witness stand that prosecutors cooperated in paying him between $10,000 and $12,000 a month from court-supervised assets of the victims of his frauds. In contrast to the frugal public image Christie has fostered, the money was to pay for Dwek's services and expertise. The charges, with all but one of the political defendants a Democrat, were announced during the Christie campaign. Some news reports claim the charges were timed by his former staff for maximum impact to improve his standing with voters and news reporters.