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Steven R. Reed, a spokesman for the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, said on Monday that the office had no comment on any investigation related to the subpoenas sent to Room 8. Mr. Reed, however, said it was not uncommon for subpoenas to include nondisclosure language in order to protect an investigation.
In this case, he said, “The district attorney was not aware that a subpoena was sent nor was he aware of the content of the comments, until after the subpoena was sent. The district attorney reviewed the matter, determined that a subpoena was not necessary at this time, and directed that it be withdrawn.”
Because of that withdrawal, Mr. Smith and his lawyers could share court filings in the case and talk about it openly.
In addition to Republican Dissident, prosecutors wanted to identify several other people who chose to post comments anonymously. Some of the comments cited news reports about investigations to support their criticism of Republican officials.
The prospect of helping to unmask some of the commenters on the site made Mr. Smith and Mr. Tsabar nervous.
“If our anonymous bloggers were to learn that we’d been handing out their identities to politicians whom they’ve been criticizing, I think they’d be much less likely to write on the site,” Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Tsabar found lawyers willing to represent them free at Public Citizen Litigation Group, a public interest law firm that has been active in other cases involving free speech online.
Pro bono representation was important, Mr. Smith said, because Room 8 does not generate much advertising revenue. Both founders have day jobs unrelated to the site, Mr. Smith as senior political writer at Politico, the online news site devoted to politics, and Mr. Tsabar as vice president at Ketchum, a large public relations firm.
Paul Alan Levy, a lawyer at Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington who has played a role in many free speech cases involving technology, filed a motion to quash the subpoena and argued that the proceedings should not be secret. Filings in the case are on Public Citizen’s Web site.
“They refused to go anyplace and tell me, what are they investigating, why is this speech relevant,” Mr. Levy said. Prosecutors also opposed posting a note on the blog announcing the subpoena, though they eventually permitted Room 8 to try to send an e-mail message in May to Republican Dissident about it. No one answered, but by then, Republican Dissident had already deleted all of his or her posts from the Room 8 site.
“Generally, people post anonymously sometimes for a good reason, sometimes it’s for a bad reason,” Mr. Levy said.
“We argue for a balancing test,” he continued. “Let the discovery be had when there’s a good reason for it.”
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