By Kevin Zwick
Staff Reporter
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Nov. 13) – Attorney General Kathleen Kane now says she is complying with a Senate subpoena and handed over a packet of documents to the special committee investigating her, just hours after her office said she was defying the request.
“After due consideration, she decided that complying with the request would represent the proper respect the Attorney General has for the Senate,” her spokesman Chuck Ardo said Friday afternoon.
Earlier, Ardo said Kane would not comply with the subpoena seeking internal Office of Attorney General documents because she believed the Senate lacks the authority to investigate her. That is still her belief, according to a letter she sent to the committee, but she is complying with the subpoena “to maintain the respect and decorum of our government.”
Kane offered a packet of documents in response to the special Senate committee’s subpoena request. It includes a privileged legal memo from First Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer related to the suspension of Kane’s law license. But the confidential memo was only given to the committee and not the press. Ardo said the committee could choose to release it publicly.
Also included are two, identical letters from Kane – one to Beemer and one to Executive Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Cherba – giving them authority to request wire-tap authorization from any Superior Court judge. Kane said the letters show what duties or functions she has delegated to other employees, per the subpoena request.
But she said she couldn’t directly comply with the subpoena’s request for “any opinion or explanation of the legal authority of the Attorney General to delegate any duties or functions.” She said the Commonwealth Attorneys Act bars her office from providing “legal opinions to anyone other than a Commonwealth Agency, after proper request.”
Instead, Kane offered a packet of press releases which she says shows the activities of the OAG.
Kane said she would not respond to one of the subpoena’s requests for “all filings and documentation” related to disciplinary matters which are confidential, she said. Complying with that request could subject her to further disciplinary action or be perceived as a waiver of confidentiality of those proceedings.
After a disciplinary process, the state Supreme Court issued last month an emergency temporary suspension of her law license as she faces several criminal charges related to an alleged leak of confidential grand jury material from her office to the Philadelphia Daily News.
The Senate committee is operating under a little-known state constitutional provision found in Article VI, Section 7, which says: “All civil officers elected by the people, except the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, members of the General Assembly and judges of the courts of record, shall be removed by the Governor for reasonable cause, after due notice and full hearing, on the address of two-thirds of the Senate.”
The committee, which currently isn’t pursuing direct removal but could be ordered to do so at a later date, has given itself a deadline of Thanksgiving Eve to issue its initial report.
Another public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday to hear testimony from a panel of constitutional and legal ethics experts.
