Rebekah Brooks, former head of Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper arm, and her husband launched an emotional attack on the British police and prosecutors after being charged yesterday with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. They labelled the case a “witch hunt” that would turn out to be “nothing more than an expensive sideshow”.
The decision by the Brooks to make personal statements to the television cameras capped one of the most dramatic days in a scandal that has engulfed Mr Murdoch’s media empire and raised questions about Mrs Brooks’ close ties to the prime minister David Cameron and other senior politicians.
Earlier in the day, Mrs Brooks and her husband Charlie were charged with concealing evidence from the police investigating phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World newspaper she formerly edited. These were the first criminal charges filed since the police reopened their investigation into phone hacking in January 2011.