By Robert Field
Wednesday’s LNP editorial “Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s resignation is long overdue” rejoices in her conviction and takes credit for their strident calls for her resignation, which began at the time of her grand jury indictment. More on that below.
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane in the hallway of the Montgomery County Courthouse, during a break in the trial, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on August 15th, 2016. (pool photo Inquirer Staff Photographer / Jessica Griffin)
With Pennsylvania rated by Fortune Magazine as the fifth most corrupt state in the union and a Republican opponent tied by marriage and career to members of the political establishment, voters were attracted to a candidate who had been relatively isolated from state politics.
Kathleen Kane was perceived as a reformer. The timing of her candidacy was propitious and she was elected by a landslide, leading the entire ticket.
What was not sufficiently weighed by the voters was Kane’s paucity of managerial experience. She was only an assistant district attorney from Lackawanna County (Scranton area) and had spent years raising a family. Her family’s wealth, her good looks, and being a state establishment outsider worked in her favor.
As an unknown, not beholding to either political party or to any of her predecessors, she was understandably perceived as a threat to past and current elected and appointed officials who for decades had been abusing the public trust and enriching themselves at public expense. She had no allies including the Democrat Governor Tom Wolf who early on she successfully challenged on a legal issue.
Kane by disposition and lack of experience was not hardened to the vicious opposition and attacks she would encounter. And since she never held a managerial office previously, she had no astute and trusted staff to accompany her to Harrisburg that would have a supportive, enlightening and likely constraining influence on her.
Good managers know that one, two or three people cannot change a company’s culture. It takes the insertion of a right thinking team to successfully bring about a change.
Instead Kane was swimming alone among sharks. Like Richard Nixon, she succumbed to her darker side and then made things much worse by denying her mistake.
Leaked testimony from past grand juries is not that uncommon and is rarely if ever cause for prosecution. As an example, similar leaks to the media took place from the current grand jury that indicted her without calls for investigation and prosecution of their sources.
Kane determined the investigation of several Philadelphia Democrat officials had been tinged with prejudice and declined to prosecute. The criminal justice system should not be treated as sport, one side trying to win over the other. She was an officer of the court and her duty was to act on her judgment in pursuing justice. She chose discretion.
By prosecuting Kane the Republican Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin Steele, enhanced his political career. To have exercised discretion and not prosecute might have ended it.
We would likely not be so critical of the series of LNP editorials if a member of the editorial board were not a distinguished attorney. According to the editorial, “The fact that she hasn’t resigned before today is a travesty and an embarrassment.” Somehow the editors had lost sight of the principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.
It is well understood that prosecutors have little difficulty in obtaining an indictment from a grand jury:
“New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler was famously quoted by Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities that ‘a grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.’ ” Wikipedia
If grand jury indictment were to be the litmus test for obtaining the resignation of an elected official, then all sorts of charges over petty matters would be floated by political opponents. The will of the electorate could be easily thwarted.
However, there is a constitutional provision for the removal of elected Pennsylvanian officials, even without a conviction. It requires indictment by the General Assembly and conviction by the Senate. Had Kane performance in office been seen as a danger to the criminal justice system, it was the responsibility of the legislators to remove her from office. If the editors believed that Kane had to go, LNP should have criticized the legislators for disregarding their duty.
Even though two justices were subjects of her investigations, the state Supreme Court adhered to the constitution. They removed Kane’s law license, perhaps to defang her (but with little success, witness the two justices who later resigned in disgrace.) But they allowed her to stay in office.
Why didn’t LNP take the Supreme Court justices to task?
We wish Kane good luck with her appeal. Her offense was not nearly as bad as the real crooks who have long feasted at the public trough and who plotted to undermine her or later went along even before she took office.
The Philadelphia Daily News ‘burned her’ as a source of a leak. The rest of the statewide media joined in, without an apparent scintilla of consideration that they were turning their collective backs on the pledge of the press to confidentiality concerning their sources. NewsLank was not hoodwinked by the zeitgeist of the moment.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane may have been Pennsylvania’s only hope for reform for a long time to come.
Once again, Pennsylvania ‘old boys club’ won.
“The Philadelphia Daily News ‘burned her’ as a source of a leak. The rest of the statewide media joined in, without an apparent scintilla of consideration that they were turning their collective backs on the pledge of the press to confidentiality concerning their sources.”. Just like NPR’s blatant attack on Julian Assange, for not revealing his sources … Methinks the Bigger Issue here in regards to the media becoming the messenger of an increasingly corrupt and despotic government.
Can anyone seriously doubt that it was the old boys’ network that brought her down? She lifted up the rock and exposed a tiny corner of some pretty nasty stuff that judges were getting up to and the system bit back. Another uppity woman – and worse, a Democrat – to be vilified and disposed of. Sound familiar?
Really? Apologist for Kane? She spent years raising a family, asked managerial experience, and was swimming with sharks? Takes a rather large suspension of reality to keep this establishment anti-establishment narrative going, doesn’t it? I mean, I know why you do it. Without the false narrative NewLanc has nothing. But you might want to disguise it a little better.
I guess the thing in my mind, was early in her time, when she held a press conference and told us all she would not enforce state law in regards to LGTB issues. Not saying her view on that was wrong, but thats not her place. She was hired by the voters to enforce state laws, not to legislate state law. She could have simply done that with out the public fan fare, and no one would have worried about it, but when you hold a press conference to announce it, your just trying to run tracks for higher office.
This seems to be the thing that is going on, governors and presidents legislating by executive order, AG’s deciding what laws they will enforce, its become a trend.
Her big claim to fame is she made a few judges and other officials resign over racy photo’s in their e-mail. They were wrong to do it, but if every man had to resign from their job who ever sent or received one of those, not many of us would be employed. I don’t do it, and salesmen who call on me learn to not send them to me, but that’s not the corrupt issues in our state, or even close to it.
In the end, Ms Kane was just another self serving politician trying to promote herself for higher office and position.
…Corruption is no stranger to either party. It does however seem to me that many aspects of the Kane situation fail the sniff test.