California’s Deputy AG Arrested on Child Porn Charge
Tips sent earlier in the year to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by internet service providers concerned about the uploading of child pornography by one of their users eventually led authorities to California’s deputy attorney general.
After the NCMEC received the tips, it forwarded them to the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children task force, which quickly traced the activity to the Coronado home of the state’s deputy attorney general, Joseph Liddy.
Investigators also discovered the age listed on Liddy’s anonymous online profile coincided with his real age.
The son of G. Gordon Liddy, a disbarred lawyer convicted in 1974 for orchestrating the burglary of the Democrat National Committee’s headquarters in the notorious Watergate scandal, Joseph Liddy admitted in an interview with federal agents Tuesday that he may have uploaded child pornography to the web.
Liddy specifically claimed he had used an anonymous screen name to share sexual fantasies online and download and share pornographic pictures that he maintained were of adults but “may have been of children,” according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
When authorities served him with a search warrant and subsequently searched his home, however, they discovered stored images depicting children engaged in sexual activities.
Liddy was thereafter arrested and booked into federal jail on a charge of possessing pornographic images of children.
After entering a plea of not guilty, Liddy was granted release in lieu of a $100,000 bond during an arraignment hearing later that same afternoon with stipulations that he agree to home detention and GPS monitoring, or what’s more commonly known as house arrest.
Speaking with San Diego station KFMB, his attorney Knut Johnson called the charges against his client “a tragedy for everyone included.”
Johnson also provided a stunning defense of his client’s character, calling him “a wonderful person” who’s purportedly “universally loved by a lot of different people who expressed that to me and he is a terrific human being.”
“This is the very beginning of the case and then we will get to the end and figure out what it is all about,” Johnson said.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office released a statement Wednesday saying it was aware of the charges against Liddy and that he has been placed on administrative leave.
Liddy will return to federal court Aug. 8 for a hearing on the case.
Liddy has served as California’s deputy attorney general since 2008. He’s also a Marine Reservist who served in Iraq. (For more from the author of “California’s Deputy AG Arrested on Child Porn Charge” please click HERE)
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