MONTREAL — An American who published banned testimony on the Internet from the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal says traffic on his website has surpassed the number of hits it had for the U.S. election.

Ed Morrissey said Tuesday he first posted testimony from Quebec advertising executive Jean Brault on his web log, commonly known as a blog, on the weekend.

Morrissey, from Minneapolis, Minn., said on U.S. election night last November his blog had 100,000 hits.

But on Monday, traffic had increased fourfold.

"I had almost 400,000 hits on my blog on Monday ... four times what I got on the American election," he said in an interview. As of noon Tuesday, he said his blog already had 206,000 hits.

Brault has been testifying under a publication ban at the federal sponsorship inquiry, but presiding judge John Gomery has said he will listen to arguments for lifting the ban on the testimony once Brault has finished on the witness stand.

The ban was put in place because Brault could soon stand trial on fraud charges with Chuck Guite, the bureaucrat responsible for running the sponsorship program which was to raise the profile of the federal government in Quebec. The ban is intended to ensure an unbiased pool of jurors.

Morrissey said most of the people visiting his blog site are from north of the border.

"It's just amazing how much traffic is coming across the site and it's mostly from Canada."

Morrissey, whose blog can be described as right-of-centre, said the issue was "brought to him" and before he posted the information he did some checking to make sure it was an issue he wanted to write about.

"While I'm surprised at the level of traffic I've gotten off this, it doesn't surprise me that Canadians are unhappy with the idea that they have been locked out of the process," he said.

"You have politicians who are in the room who are able to disseminate the information to other politicians, you have the press that's in the room who can talk about it themselves.

"The only people who are excluded from the information that's going on in that inquiry are the Canadian citizens and I think that's wrong and it's a terrible exclusion to make."

However, other U.S. blogs ignored the Gomery inquiry.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News noted on his blog that Morrissey is covering "some scandal it's illegal for Canadian papers to talk about which is pretty nifty, but let's face it, that's a pretty dry topic unless you're a Canuck, eh."

Morrissey said it's not the first time he has talked about Canadian politics since he started his blog 18 months ago.

"I think it was about a month ago I wrote about (Prime Minister) Paul Martin and his reversal on the missile defence initiative.

Morrissey said he also believes Brault would be able to get a fair trial without a publication ban.

"The notion that a grown-up can't make a decision based on what's presented in court because he happened to read about a story in a newspaper two months ago or three weeks ago is silly."

Several people who responded to Morrissey's blog on Saturday used headlines like: Putting the "Gomer" back in Gomery and We Ban on Guard for Thee.

However, some readers said they support the publication ban.