Mr. Kurson, a former newspaper editor, was accused of cyberstalking his former wife both before and after their 2016 divorce.
Ken Kurson, a former editor of The New York Observer who was charged with unlawfully spying on his former wife, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to two misdemeanors, with the opportunity to have the charges further reduced after a year.
Mr. Kurson, 53, had been charged in August by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with eavesdropping and computer trespass, both felonies, each of which carry a penalty of up to four years in prison.
On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to attempting both crimes. But under the terms of his plea deal, if he completes 100 hours of community service and is not arrested in connection with another crime, he will withdraw those pleas, and plead to the lesser offense of second degree harassment, a violation, in a year.
In New York, when prosecutors charge certain low-level felonies as having been attempted, instead of committed, they become misdemeanors.
The plea ends a yearslong saga for Mr. Kurson, a close friend of former President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that began when Mr. Kurson was nominated for a seat on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2018. The potential appointment, which Mr. Kurson described at the time as an “honorary-type position,” soon led to legal trouble.
A routine background check for the appointment soon revealed allegations that Mr. Kurson had harassed several people, and in 2020, federal prosecutors charged him with cyberstalking and harassment. But Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Kurson in his final hours in office.
Then, in August, Mr. Kurson was charged again, this time by state prosecutors with the district attorney’s office, who accused him of having used a software program called WebWatcher to hack into his former wife’s computer and monitor her online activities.
The program gave him access to the passwords of her Gmail and Facebook accounts, prosecutors said. They accused Mr. Kurson of using that access to spy on her from September 2015 to March 2016, even as their marriage fell apart and they divorced.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that Mr. Kurson’s former wife had been involved in discussions about the deal offered to Mr. Kurson. After Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Kurson, the administration said that his former wife had written a letter to federal prosecutors asking them to drop their case.
A State Supreme Court judge, Josh Hanshaft, did not immediately approve the deal on Wednesday, asking for some time to review it. But after about an hour, he acquiesced.
When the charges against Mr. Kurson were brought over the summer, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., then the Manhattan district attorney, said, “We will not accept presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected in New York.”
Mr. Kurson, who is also a former speechwriter for Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and adviser to Mr. Trump, was one of several Trump associates who received pardons for federal crimes, only to find that Mr. Vance, a Democrat, had opened investigations into their conduct. (Presidential pardons do not shield against state charges.) Mr. Vance also spent years investigating Mr. Trump and his business practices.
In 2019, Mr. Vance charged Paul J. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, with a number of crimes, including mortgage fraud. A New York appeals court ruled that the charges violated the state’s double jeopardy law, bringing the case to an end.
Mr. Vance also opened an investigation into Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist. And in July, the district attorney’s office charged Mr. Trump’s family business and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, with a yearslong scheme to evade taxes on special perks.
In January, Mr. Vance was succeeded by Alvin Bragg, a former federal prosecutor who is also a Democrat. Under Mr. Bragg, prosecutors have continued their criminal investigations into Mr. Trump and his organization, and, separately, into Mr. Bannon.
Ben Protess contributed reporting.
