Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett has withdrawn his subpoena of Twitter, through which he had been seeking information on the identity of a blogger who was attacking him.
State prosecutors in the Brett Cott case said today, after Cott was sentenced to five years in prison, that the subpoena is no longer necessary. In a memo given to the judge before sentencing, they had argued that Cott should receive a stiffer sentence, in part because he had used the blog “to deflect blame and deny responsibility for his criminal conduct, and to attack and malign the investigative and prosecutorial process which resulted in his conviction.”
Cott, a former Democratic legislative aide was convicted earlier this year in a case stemming from an investigation into allegations that state employees who worked on political campaigns were paid bonuses out of state funds. He has not confirmed whether he is the blogger behind the site critical of Corbett.
Cott’s lawyer said that Corbett, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, had tried to “intimidate people,” with the subpoena. “The attorney general’s office should be ashamed.”
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