Fox Mole Joe Muto Says His Laptop Was Seized in Grand Larceny Investigation

A “polite” crew from the District Attorney’s office served Fox Mole Joe Muto with a search warrant at 6:30 this

A “polite” crew from the District Attorney’s office served FOX (FOXA) Mole Joe Muto with a search warrant at 6:30 this morning, Mr. Muto said on Twitter.

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Officers took his iPhone, laptop and old notebooks, he wrote, adding that, according to the warrant, he is being investigated for charges including grand larceny.

“They’re pretty worked up over a clip of Romney talking about his horses,” Mr. Muto wrote of the unaired Fox News video footage he published on Gawker. Nick Denton’s news site thought the clip was worth $5,000, five times the threshold for grand larceny in New York.

“I should have done something more innocuous, like hacked a dead girl’s phone and interfered with a police investigation,” he added, referring to Fox News parent company News Corp.’s ongoing phone hacking and bribery scandal.

The scandal thrust chief Rupert Murdoch in the spotlight again today in another installment of the Leveson inquiry. Testifying before a judge, a rehearsed, confident Mr. Murdoch denied asking any favors of Prime Ministers and claimed Gordon Brown misled Parliament when he said Murdoch tabloids hacked his family’s medical records.

In the inquiry, Mr. Murdoch slammed the once-rampant phone hacking practice as a “lazy way of reporters not doing their job,” but maintained that the celebrities, politicians and public figures—including himself—should be subject to greater scrutiny.

“A lot of these people are very big in the lives of ordinary people, big television stars, film stars, and, of course, I must include politicians. If we are getting into the issue of privacy, people with public responsibilities—I would even include press proprietors in that—I don’t think they are entitled to the same privacy as the ordinary man in the street. If we are going to have a transparent society let’s have everything out there,” he said.

Everything except any information about about News Corp. cash cow Fox News, that is.

Fox Mole Joe Muto Says His Laptop Was Seized in Grand Larceny Investigation