And now it looks like it could, courtesy Eric Boehlert:
The background: A New Jersey start-up company, Floorgraphics (FGI), was created to sell large advertising decals placed on the floors of grocery stores. In 1999, FGI's founders, Richard and George Rebh, met with Carlucci who at the time was CEO of News America Marketing, an in-store advertising division of News Corp. (In 2005, Carlucci added the title of Post publisher to his resume.) At the lunch, after the Rebhs rebuffed Carlucci's offer to buy the company, he allegedly threatened to destroy FGI.
Years later company executives discovered FGI's secure website had been broken into nearly a dozen times and confidential information had been obtained. They alleged Murdoch's company was spreading lies about FGI and using its proprietary information to steal away clients.
At the time, FGI urged authorities to pursue criminal charges, but the case was not prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney General's office in New Jersey, run at the time by Chris Christie. (Now governor of New Jersey, Christie has struck up a close working relationship with Roger Ailes, chief of Murdoch's Fox News.)
A FGI civil suit, claiming a series of anti-competitive practices, was filed against News Corp.'s News America. In 2009, after only a couple of days of testimony, the case was abruptly settled with Murdoch's company agreeing to purchase FGI for $30 million, but not before News America conceded that someone using its computers had hacked FGI's website. (News America claimed it did not know who the culprit was.)
Now, in light of the UK phone-hacking fiasco, NBC's Michael Isikoff reports Department of Justice prosecutors "are reviewing allegations that News Corp.'s advertising arm repeatedly hacked into the computers of a competitor in the United States as part of an effort to steal the rival firm's business, according to a lawyer for the company."
Just what Mr. Unpleasant needs, in the middle of falling ratings, to be deposed by a U.S. Attorney (his old job!)
This is not to say that Governor Christie is guilty of any criminal wrongdoing. I doubt he did anything as unethical as taking a bribe (though it would be in character). But his hot seat is going to get a whole lot hotter.
