UT student hires a lawyer after FBI raid; friends worry what's next

The UT student at the center of an FBI investigation into the hacking of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal email account, has hired a lawyer.

Wade Davies has confirmed he will represent David Kernell in the investigation that has launched national attention.

UT officials are not commenting on the case and will only confirm the Kernell is a sophomore at the University of Tennessee.

A spokesperson with the University of Tennessee will not say if they are involved with the federal investigation that led to a weekend raid on Kernell's apartment.

But one of Kernell's long time friends has plenty to say about his concern for Kernell's safety and future.

Devon Holbrook is a UT student from Memphis who grew up with Kernell. He was shocked to hear from mutual friends that David was in some serious trouble.

"I went on Google, and the first thing I saw is David's picture and articles talking about what had happened," Holbrook said. "I immediately started freaking out."

When Holbrook confirmed the news about the FBI frenzy surrounding his longtime friend, he started calling but wasn't able to connect with Kernell.

"I would love to know where he is and know he's alright."

Holbrook says Kernell loves chess, economics, and talking about politics.

"I would definitely say he's more to the left in terms of politics, but he's never really been active as far as political groups or anything like that," Holbrook added.

However under a different name, Kernell's political views are all over several websites.

"He goes by the name Rubico," Holbrook said.

A blogger named Rubico admitted to the web community he broke into Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's e-mail, saying it was easy.

According to Wired.com, Rubico posted this statement after he was disappointed to find only personal files in Palin's yahoo account:

I read though the emails? ALL OF THEM? before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped.

On Sunday night Holbrook had a brief online conversation with Rubico.

"Basically I was playing X-box and saw that he got online, and I just tried to send him a message to see how he was doing, and he told me he was doing fine, he couldn't really talk."

Meanwhile, UT's student body is buzzing over the raid and investigation surrounding one of their own.

"The only real connection UT has is the internet email address the student used was traced back to his UT Knoxville email account," UT Student Body President Jeff Wilcox said. "Maybe it is bad publicity, but it certainly draws awareness to the subject that internet crime is out there, and beware."

But Holbrook isn't looking at headlines. He's worried about what is next for Kernell.

"He's just doing what most college kids do. He's learning and growing up, you know, I think he's a great guy. I don't want this to ruin the rest of his life."

Kernell's father is State Representative Mike Kernell, a democrat from Memphis.