By Kevin Zwick & Sam Janesch
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Aug. 12) – Attorney General Kathleen Kane says it’s not about personal vendettas – it’s all about that porn.
“For it’s not a story about sting investigations, personal vendettas or press leaks. It is a story that begins with pornography, racial insensitivity, and religious bigotry,” Kane said during a Capitol appearance where she took no questions from the press “under advice of counsel.”
Kane’s statement comes less than a week after the state’s embattled top law enforcement officer and first Democrat elected AG was charged criminally for leaking confidential, grand jury material and then lying about it under oath in an attempt to cover up the leak, which prosecutors say was part of Kane’s “war” to discredit former top OAG prosecutor Frank Fina. Kane on Wednesday referred to those charges as “a stealth political weapon” being used to undercut her efforts to change the attorney general’s office, which had been under Republican control for three decades prior to her 2012 election.
Kane on Wednesday asked Montgomery County Judge William Carpenter to lift a protective order that would allow her to release all pornographic emails discovered as part of her office’s review of how the Office of Attorney General, then run by Tom Corbett, handled the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse investigation.
“From the moment this email traffic became discoverable – from the moment I announced that the Moulton investigation into Jerry Sandusky’s investigation had the technology in hand to track down every email in the Corbett Attorney General’s Office – some involved in this filthy email chain have tried desperately to insure that these emails, and more importantly their attachment to it, never see the light of day,” Kane said during the press conference Wednesday.
Carpenter, the judge who supervised the statewide investigating grand jury that recommended charges against Kane for an alleged leak of confidential material, issued a protective order on August 27, 2014, which barred Kane’s office from accessing testimony and other materials as well as retaliating against anyone who testified before the grand jury investigating the leak.
Two weeks after Carpenter issued the protective order, Kane directed a close confidante, Patrick Reese, to “secretly or surreptitiously” review an OAG email system for information related to the grand jury investigating Kane, according to Montgomery County investigators. Reese was charged with indirect contempt for violating the protective order but maintains his innocence.
Around the same time last year, Kane’s office allowed reporters to view pornographic images which her office said were attached to hundreds of emails sent or received by former employees hired under Republican administrations.
Her office also released hundreds of pages of emails with some names redacted. But she named eight former OAG employees, including some who followed Corbett when he was elected governor, who sent or received emails with text containing lewd language, racial and religious slurs and insensitive remarks about gays.
The release led to the resignation of Gov. Corbett’s environmental secretary Christopher Abruzzo and his aide, Glenn Parno, and the removal of Randy Feathers, a former OAG agent who at the time was an appointee to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. Kane’s office also named Patrick Blessington, who was hired by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office in 2011, and Rick Sheetz, who went to work for the Lancaster County DA’s office (he has since resigned), as well as two other former top Corbett aides who work in the private sector: Kevin Harley, Corbett’s former long-time spokesman who works at Harrisburg PR firm; and Christopher Carusone, who was the Corbett administration’s top legislative affairs aide before becoming a private practice attorney.
Former State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan, who was a top aide to then-AG Corbett, was also among those named, but a review of his emails by Corbett’s office last fall found he did not participate in reading or passing around the lewd emails. Corbett said he was unaware that close aides were sending explicit emails on state email accounts and denounced the activity.
Former Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, who was not named by OAG, was also linked to the email scandal and resigned.
“Porngate,” she said, has led to the termination of six, the resignation of two, and the reprimand of 23 employees at the OAG.
Those attempting to discredit her, she said, have been assisted “wittingly or unwittingly” by judges and prosecutors, including Judge Carpenter.
Kane publicly asked Carpenter to authorize her to “release to the public all pornographic, racially offensive, and/or religiously offensive emails that were housed in Attorney General files on Commonwealth of Pennsylvania servers,” and assure she would be protected in doing so against civil or criminal penalties.
She also asked for the release of transcripts, emails and supporting documents related to the issuance of the protective order and for the PA Disciplinary Board to suspend any activity surrounding her law license unless Carpenter releases the information.
“…And should I be removed from office, either by conviction or through a suspension of my license through the state’s Disciplinary Board, the one person who would challenge that order would no longer have standing to do so. But that was their plan all along,” she said.
A phone message left at Carpenter’s chambers was not returned.
Jim Kovel, spokesman for the chief justice’s office, said Kane would have to file a motion to ask Carpenter to change the protective order.
Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman charged Kane last week with crimes including perjury, obstruction and official oppression. Ferman alleges Kane believed Fina was the source behind a March 2014 Philadelphia Inquirer story critical of Kane’s decision to abandon an undercover sting operation that caught some Philadelphia Democrats on tape accepting envelopes of cash and gifts in exchange for official favor. Fina, who now works for the Philadelphia District Attorney, also led that investigation.
In retaliation, Ferman alleges, Kane leaked secret investigative material to the Philadelphia Daily News to smear Fina, who led a probe into the finances of J. Whyatt Mondesire, the former head of the Philadelphia NAACP. That investigation never resulted in charges.
Kane has been facing mounting pressure to resign from top Democrats and Republicans. But she countered the idea the case against her has been a distraction by touting statistics from her office since the leak to the Philadelphia Daily News 15 months ago.
“If this is a distraction, if these numbers are a distraction, if 247 child predator arrests represent a distraction, if over 1,000 drug arrests represent a distraction, then maybe more public service employees need to be distracted and maybe we’ll have a budget soon,” she said.
When asked for reaction to Kane’s statement, Gov. Tom Wolf later Wednesday afternoon reiterated his desire to see her step down.
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Fina is sweating bullets over this one.