[www.nytimes.com]

Seven months after being pardoned by President Donald J. Trump, a onetime editor of The New York Observer faces new charges of unlawfully spying on his former wife by secretly gaining access to her computer.

The editor, Ken Kurson, a close friend of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was charged in state criminal court in Manhattan on Wednesday with eavesdropping and computer trespass, both felonies. Prosecutors accuse Mr. Kurson of using spyware to breach his wife’s computer in 2015 as the couple’s marriage fell apart. Each crime is punishable by up to four years in prison.

“We will not accept presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected in New York,” the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement announcing the charges.

A lawyer for Mr. Kurson, Marc L. Mukasey, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kurson used the spyware to monitor his wife’s computer keystrokes from The Observer’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, which allowed him to get the passwords to her Gmail and Facebook accounts, according to prosecutors. He used the illicit access to spy on her from September 2015 to March 2016, prosecutors said. The couple divorced in January 2016.

I just got a shiver after thinking that this was the reason that Cheeto did so well. Then I realized that it is one of the main reasons that Republicans get reelected so often.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

"Vance noted that the federal pardon did not prevent Kurson from being charged on a state level."