That is the end of his career unless he can explain himself, which his lawyer is trying to do:
Ward's attorney said today that the charges are based on incidents that occurred more than four years ago and were part of research for a book.
"As everybody knows, Bernie, for over 20 years, has been a progressive, opposed to insensitive authority - he has been a champion of charities, nonprofits for the homeless," said Doron Weinberg, who appeared in federal court today as Ward's lawyer.
"More than three years ago, Bernie was doing research for a book he was doing on hypocrisy in America," Weinberg said.
As part of the research, Ward downloaded "a few images" of child pornography, and, Weinberg said, "it came to the attention of the government in late 2004."
"They investigated and they never found any involvement in child pornography other than this period that he accessed these images," Weinberg said. "The government knows that Bernie was doing this for an investigation he was doing for a book. But the government believes he violated the letter of the law and they have gone ahead and prosecuted him."
Weinberg stressed that "the fact that these events happened three years ago and they are just being prosecuted shows the fact that nobody believes that he is a child predator."
"He is just being prosecuted for a mistake he made (more than) three years ago," the lawyer said.
His agent has something to say about this. So does his lawyer.
Downloading the stuff is illegal, no matter what the reason.
This alleged stuff happened four years ago, yet he is being prosecuted now. It sounds very fishy.
We will see what happens.
