The Affable Affiant & WTAE's Sleuthing FOP Spouse

City Paper's Chris Potter has a 1/27 blog post with News On Dreaming Ant. The post includes links to GoogleDocs containing the affidavit and the search warrant used to seize the hard drive and router from the Pittsburgh coffee shop.

click for full-size documents, opens in a new window

This WTAE news article (screen shot on the right) shows WTAE's story about the seizure of the hard drive and router. The key quote (circled in red) is:

Police didn't say what led them to the computer at the Dreaming Ant video store, where an employee Thursday said he knew nothing of the letter.

What's curious about that assertion is the story of how the FOP came into possession of the spoof press release. Police documents indicate that they received the email and the PDF from Ashlie Hardway, a WTAE journalist (and blogger) who is also married to a FOP member. Nice.


It seems disingenuous (at best) for WTAE to report that police wouldn't say what led them to Dreaming Ant, when in fact it was WTAE that led the FOP to the scene of the "crime".

Another interesting point in the Affidavit was the oblique mention of another, earlier search warrant, looking for IP address information.


Perhaps Mr. Young and Mr. Potter of City Paper will be able to unearth the earlier IP search warrant application and document. It might be interesting reading.

Maybe WTAE can get it, they have a connection.