David Kernell, the college student who bloggers have tied to the Sarah Palin e-mail hack, has now officially been served with a search warrant by the FBI.

The feds searched Kernell's apartment while the University of Tennessee sophomore was throwing a party at his Knoxville apartment on Saturday night, though witnesses say he fled the scene before he was questioned. His three roommates were also subpoenaed, and will testify this week.

While no charges have been filed, things aren't looking good for Kernell, whose father, Mike Kernell, is a Democratic state representative in Tennessee. In a post on the 4chan forum, where the Palin e-mails first appeared, Kernell, using the handle "Rubicon," describes the hack in detail and admits he knew that "if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked." He got into Palin's account using nothing but Wikipedia and some Google searches, meaning the only person on Earth who couldn't have figured out how to access the thing is probably John McCain, but it's doubtful the FBI will afford him any leniency because of that.

Kernell's Facebook profile has been taken down, but someone managed to get screengrabs from it beforehand. He describes himself as an "Obamacrat," and is a member of numerous hippy-dippy liberal groups, like "Global Warming is Real, And it's Happening Now." (On 4chan, Kernell acknowledges that he was searching for incriminating info about Palin that would "derail her campaign," but didn't find anything juicy.)

The feds won't say what property, if any, they took from Kernell's apartment, but I think it's pretty safe to assume his computer was pretty high on their priority list.