No, Findlaw doesn’t say otherwise. It says that the civil tort of assault is also a crime.
Again, a tort is a civil wrong wherein the aggrieved person (i.e. plaintiff) files a lawsuit in civil court and the defendant faces the possibility of paying monetary damages to the person he injured.
This man is charged with a criminal felony by the government, specifically felony blackmail and computer crimes. He faces jail time and monetary fines payable to the government.
The computer crimes only hold up if the blackmail holds up, and the blackmail only holds up if the threats themselves are somehow illegal, and that is going to be extraordinarily hard to prove.
For one thing, doing research on a public figure to find embarrassing information is perfectly legal, and may involve friends, family, and associates of the public figure, so long as the embarrassment is aimed at the public figure, not the private figures. Gerhart’s email is written such that it is ambiguous about the private figures, and generally ambiguity is read in favor of the defendant.
Gerhart’s only real problem is the OK blackmail statute itself. It is horribly broad, and if he loses at trial and appeals this up the chain, it is very likely the statute would be thrown out as unenforceable vague. Text is as follows:
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Blackmail is verbally or by written or printed communication and with intent to extort or gain any thing of value from another or to compel another to do an act against his or her will:
1. Accusing or threatening to accuse any person of a crime or conduct which would tend to degrade and disgrace the person accused;
2. Exposing or threatening to expose any fact, report or information concerning any person which would in any way subject such person to the ridicule or contempt of society; or
3. Threatening to report a person as being illegally present in the United States, and is coupled with the threat that such accusation or exposure will be communicated to a third person or persons unless the person threatened or some other person pays or delivers to the accuser or some other person some thing of value or does some act against his or her will. Blackmail is a felony punishable by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for not to exceed five (5) years or fine not to exceed Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00) or by both such imprisonment and fine.
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That statute, as written, denies clearly permissible political speech, almost all of which is designed to embarrass SOMEbody in order to get them to do something they otherwise wouldn’t. For example, most politicians of any party. Traditional blackmail is typically an individualized quid pro quo, some action or inaction traded for money or other pecuniary benefit, with that benefit going to just the blackmailer, not, for example, the electorate at large, and particularly not where the alleged “blackmail” is mainly aimed at trying to get a politician to do his job.