Kane opponents pretend there are complicated legal issues at hand, when nothing can be further from the truth. What’s at hand, of course, are mountains of porno emails.
The problem with Pennsylvania government isn’t the state budget, or AG Kathleen Kane: the problem is Pennsylvania government
The Pennsylvania Senate Republican leadership wants you to know that they really don’t give a tinker’s dam about outrageous corruption in the commonwealth.
They really don’t care about the Jerry Sandusky / Second Mile fiasco, or the firing of Joe Paterno. They don’t care about the Kids for Cash scandal, or the Hershey Trust scandal. Or the state budget scandal.
And they certainly don’t care about you, or your family.
What do they care about in the state Senate leadership?
They care about protecting themselves, their corrupt cronies, and their porno email collection. That’s about it.
Gansler (top), Baker (middle) and Beemer
To find evidence of this, look no further than the Senate’s phony “Direct Address” hearings that are supposedly aimed at removing Attorney General Kathleen Kane from office.
As you probably know, the Republican Senate leadership has wasted perfectly good email reading time by oafishly exploring the removal of AG Kane from office without a hearing, as a means of silencing her.
All along, there really wasn’t much credibility with the Senate’s sloppy, lazy and unconstitutional Direct Address attempt.
But last week the Senate’s clumsy effort lost any remaining vestige of credibility when the committee got down to the business at hand of what it really cares about: putting up obstacles to end the independent investigation of the state’s growing pornographic email scandal.
In so doing, the Senate leadership unmasked their effort for what it truly is all about: protecting themselves and their corrupt network of cronies in state government.
This became apparent on January 13, with a telling and strange letter from state Senator Lisa Baker, a member of the Senate’s “Special Committee on Senate Address,” sent to First Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer, one of the holdover employees from Tom Corbett’s AG’s office.
Beemer, as readers know, is now attempting to usurp the powers of the Office of Attorney General by pretending that he, and not Kane, is the attorney general.
But Beemer’s comical farce is just a smaller part of the larger comic opera.
In December, as most readers know, AG Kane appointed former Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler as an independent prosecutor to examine the tens of thousands of pornographic and otherwise demeaning emails sent between Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices and their extensive network of sophomoric, slacker good-time buddies who make up the backbone of Pennsylvania government, such as it is.
Since then, Deputy AG Beemer and his holdover cohorts from the Corbett administration have been doing everything imaginable to erect roadblocks to prevent Special Prosecutor Gansler from conducting his independent inquiry. It’s called, in any other state, “obstructing justice.”
They all obviously feel threatened by Special Prosecutor Gansler. And rightly so.
Beemer and his chums in and around the AG’s office have had plenty of help from the state’s compromised Supreme Court justices, who for over a year have been doing everything they can think of (and the thinking doesn’t go too deep with these fellows) to deep-six their porno email scandal.
But with Sen. Baker’s truly strange letter to Deputy AG Beemer, the legislative branch is getting in on the act with the judiciary to obstruct executive law enforcement duties — and to protect their entrenched network of old-boy porno buddies.
“Since the Committee made its report to the full Senate on November 25,” Sen. Baker’s letter to Beemer reads, “several intervening events have taken place.
“Most importantly, on December 1, 2015, Kathleen Kane publicly announced appointment of a special prosecutor to review potentially pornographic and otherwise offensive emails exchanged by state officials.”
Sen. Baker then asks Beemer: “Is there a procedure within the Office of Attorney General (OAG) for determining that a Special Prosecutor or Special Deputy Attorney General is necessary?” And, “Under what legal authority does the Attorney General make such an appointment?”
Before Pretend-AG Beemer had a chance to respond, last week, on January 18, Special Prosecutor Gansler himself wrote back to Sen. Baker:
“I am in receipt of your letter, dated January 13, 2016, to Bruce R. Beemer, First Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, which includes 24 questions regarding my appointment as Special Deputy Attorney General to Conduct an Independent Investigation in order to assure public confidence in the integrity of the prosecutorial and judicial functions in the Commonwealth,” Gansler wrote.
“In particular, on December 1, 2015, I was charged by the Attorney General of Pennsylvania with the responsibility to conduct an independent review of well over one million emails on the Office of the Attorney General’s (“OAG”) email system to determine what rules, regulations, codes, policies or laws may have been violated by current or former members of the OAG, members of the judiciary or other public officials.
“I can only assume that, as an elected State Senator, you too share the concerns of the citizens of Pennsylvania regarding the diminished trust and confidence of your constituents regarding the judicial and criminal justice system, in general, and the Office of the Attorney General, in particular, as a result of the purported contents of the emails. I also believe that you welcome an independent review of the materials and look forward to my report and findings.
“I will note that it is curious that you chose not to address your inquiry to Attorney General Kane, or even to me. Further, I do not understand how my investigation has any relevance to what I understood to be the issue being heard before your committee as to whether an Attorney General with a temporarily suspended license — who could thus not temporarily ‘practice law’ — could continue to serve as Attorney General.
“…Nevertheless, I will endeavor to answer the questions contained in your letter to supplement any answers provided by others so that you and your Committee will have as complete and accurate a record as possible for your deliberations.”
On January 20, the cover-up game continued when Wanna-Be-AG Beemer finally got around to writing back to Sen. Baker to say, “At no time, was I or any other member of the legal staff I supervise consulted with respect to the appointment of Mr. Gansler. Indeed, I did not even become aware of it until it was announced in press reports.”
But why should Beemer be consulted? He’s a big part of the problem in the AG’s office. One doesn’t normally consult with compromised or corrupt officials about the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Beemer, of course, in this exchange of letters with Sen. Baker, reveals himself for what he is: point man inside the AG’s office to protect a large network of corrupt public officials in the state’s judiciary and its legislature, and God knows where else.
One of the extremely complicated email communications Sen. Baker wants to conceal
“These developments are extremely distressing to me and to members of the OAG’s legal staff many of whom have voiced their dismay at these highly irregular and ill-advised actions,” Beemer fumes.
Beemer and Sen. Baker pretend there are complicated legal issues at hand, when nothing can be further from the truth.
What’s at hand, of course, are mountains of porno emails.
There’s nothing very complicated about public officials who for years passed around porno emails, ogled over crude photos of the sucking of body parts, and espoused the demeaning treatment of women and minorities, or the blatant conflicts of interest in all this.
But Sen. Baker and Deputy AG Beemer’s correspondence help us to see this farce for what it truly is.
This entire episode is becoming quite plain and simple to understand.
The state Senate, and Sen. Baker’s “Special Committee,” really aren’t all that interested in Kathleen Kane, or even removing her from office.
They’re desperate to protect themselves and their entrenched web of corruption in government, and nothing else really matters to them.
They are so desperate to save themselves they no longer even care anymore how it all looks.
Too Excellent.. Bill. Thank you.
The only thing “truly strange” is this shrill, nearly hysterical attack on Senator Baker and Attorney Beemer.
Once again, excellent.
The question of why Sen. Baker chose to address her “concerns” to an unelected GOP holdover Deputy AG instead of AG Kane virtually answers itself. Even if it doesn’t, the very 1st graph of Beemer’s response sets forth Kane’s authority to make the appointment…
An equally interesting question is why the designated lynchpin between the Senate’s “Direct Address” panel and the “porngate” email issue is Senator Baker? She does not chair that panel and has absolutely no legal education that would even colorably qualify her to pose the questions in her letter, much less evaluate the responses.
Perhaps she is the designated antidote to the “old boy” network that many see as driving the attempts to silence Kane.
Or the explanation may lie somewhere in the internecine politics of the Pennsylvania GOP. Baker’s role suggests a likely intersection of the two.
This whole fiasco would have never taken place If the republican legislators hadn’t flexed their muscels and tried to force Kathleen Kane out of their private domain. They have brought this upon themselves and the taxpayers are paying the price.
It’s bad enough Pennsylvania has the largest, most expensive, Dysfunctional, legislative body in the country. Hang in there Kathleen, You’re not alone.
Excellent analysis, I sincerely hope that this is shown for what it is… a good old boys cover-up..
It is obvious that something is drastically wrong with the Republican Party on both the state and federal level at this point of time. This is not the party that my parents supported. How did this happen?
EDITOR: A long story over a long period of time.
Phenomenal article. Thanks for staying on top of this. We get no news of indepth coverage of the corrupt legislature or the corrupt judiciary in Western Pennsylvania. Your work is superb. Kathleen Kane should be nominated for a JFK Profiles in Courage Award.