Local Politics Blog 1, Secretive Bronx DA's Office 0

"The district attorney’s office refused to offer any details of their investigation, leaving us with the concern that the crime they were investigating was the criticism itself, most of which involved linking – with harsh, at times mean, caricatures – to news stories and to publicly available documents, like a deed in [Republican Dawn] Sandow’s name to a house outside the Bronx.

"We don’t have any position on Republican Dissident’s views or his style of expressing them. We do, however, feel very strongly that he has a right to do so without fear of exposure in an investigation that – as far as we know – appears to have concerned nothing beyond his online political speech...

"More broadly, the scary reality is that here in the free speech capital of the world, a prosecutor tried both to demand confidential information about an anonymous critic and insisted, under penalty of law, that his request for the information be kept secret. We’re glad he backed down, and confident that the courts would have rebuffed his demands."

Daily Gotham's Bouldin thinks Attorney General Andrew Cuomo should investigate the matter and the Observer's Azi Paybarah writes, "What in the world was Johnson (and, certainly, the A.D.A who wrote up the subpoena) thinking?"