U.K. police examining role of Washington Post publisher in email deletions during phone hack scandal

U.K. police has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that Washington Post publisher and chief executive Will Lewis obstructed justice 13 years ago when he assisted Rupert Murdoch in handling the phone-hacking scandal that rocked his U.K. tabloids, according to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Brown, who was one of the targets of hacking at the time, revealed in the Guardian that the U.K. police is examination the allegations that Lewis deleted emails during the fallout from the hacking.

"Having presented this new evidence to the Metropolitan police in May, I have been informed that the Met’s special inquiry team, which sits under the central specialist crime command, will look into this further," he said.

“Blazoned across the top of every edition of the Washington Post is the statement, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’,” Brown also wrote. “But what if the publisher himself is a master of the dark arts?”