Many legal analysts when reviewing the Rupert Murdoch hacking scandal focus on what criminal charges can brought against him in Britain with some making the stretch to the U.S. by saying as the head of an American corporation he can lose all his TV stations here because the law forbids such ownership if you are convicted of a felony anywhere in the world.
What most analysts have overlooked is the fact that as a naturalized U.S. citizen Murdoch could be deported for crimes of moral turpitude. Without his U.S. citizenship he would be forced to liquidate his American holdings and his vast empire would collapse like a house of cards for as you recall his sole reason for becoming a citizen was so he could buy up our corporations.
Moral turpitude is broadly defined but surely it would include crimes against America’s sacred heroes, the 9-11 victims and their families whose phones may have been hacked into by Murdoch. Now it would have to be more than one crimes of moral turpitude but if the criminal hacking charges brought by the FBI were in the form of separate counts, one for each 9-11 victim, then you would have your plurality.
Has this been done before? Yes deportation happens quite frequently for crimes as simple as a DUI but perhaps the best known case was that of mobster Al Capone who was deported as an undesirable. So Mr. Murdoch you may be tangled up in your own web of deceit and you could theoretically spend the rest of your days outside the United States back in Britain’s former prison colony, Australia.
C’est la vie