On 24 July 2012, Coulson was charged along with seven others for "conspiring to intercept communications without lawful authority from 3 October 2000 to 9 August 2006." These charges were made about after the Metropolitan Police Service reopened its dormant investigation into phone hacking, about 3 years after the then Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service told the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee that "no additional evidence has come to light," 5 years after Coulson and News International executives began claiming that phone hacking was the work of a single "rogue reporter," 10 years after "The Guardian" began reporting that the Met had evidence of widespread illegal acquisition of confidential information, and 13 years after the Met began accumulating "boxloads" of that evidence, including sources for "News of the World" journalists while Coulson was editor, but kept it unexamined in trash bags at Scotland Yard.