Posted on 01/25/2003 3:07:17 PM PST by kattracks
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Federal authorities have obtained the sealed records in the alleged Internet sex sting of former U.N. chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter to review for possible federal charges.
State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi signed an order Thursday requiring police and Albany County prosecutors to provide records and any evidence to the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office.
Federal authorities filed a motion earlier in the week to obtain the records to determine whether federal laws were violated, the Daily Gazette of Schenectady and the Times Union of Albany reported in Saturday editions.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Pericak refused to comment to the newspapers. A message to his office by The Associated Press was not immediately returned Saturday.
Ritter, 41, a critic of the Bush administration's push toward war with Iraq, acknowledged his June 2001 arrest this week in national television appearances but said he was prohibited from discussing details because the charges had been dismissed and the records sealed.
Ritter has suggested recent news reports about the arrest were an attempt to silence him. He said the publicity has forced him to cancel a recent trip to Baghdad, where he said he would have offered an alternative to military action.
Broadcast reports when he was arrested and recent newspaper reports have indicated Ritter was caught in an Internet sex sting, something he did not admit.
At the time of the arrest, NBC station WNYT-TV of Albany reported that William Scott Ritter Jr. -- Ritter's full name -- was charged with trying to lure an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl to a restaurant.
WNYT broadcast Ritter's mug shot but did not make the connection to his role as the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq during most of the 1990s.
He was charged with attempted endangerment of a child, a misdemeanor that carries up to 90 days in jail, reports said. The case was adjourned in contemplation of dismissal, meaning that if he stayed out of trouble for six months, the charges would disappear and the file would be sealed.
Do bears sh*t in the forest?
No...I mean as far as I know, no, he didn't leak it. Crier's repeating things that were flying around on the DU around the middle of last week. A thread that Pitt...or somebody claiming to be him, was on, BTW.
Absolutely.
But I hope to heck he didn't. Just imagine which character in this saga would get the blaring headlines. (Hint: not the payoff paying perv Ritter)
What's lost here is that Scott Ritter is a demented child predator. It's so typical of the left to ignore the real problem and try to paint themselves as some kind of victims because their dirty laundry gets aired. IMHO Crier is completely incompetent. To ignore the fact that Scott Ritter took it upon himself to use his keyboard and his Internet connection to lure a child into meeting him with the expectations of a sexual encounter is irresponsible and reprehensible. There is no limit on how low the leftist media will go in order to protect the rapist, pedophiles, and sexual predators that make up their ideology. These people are lacking a soul PERIOD
Before it broke in the national news? DEFINITELY.
A slice of irony if I ever heard one.
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