Should Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane resign?
This seems to be the question on many minds in the state this week, particularly since the long-overdue release of a grand jury presentment against her.
Is Kane’s story one of an American tragedy, as some are saying?
A female assistant DA from small town Scranton, Kane was propelled at a moment of public revulsion for a Republican governor into the second-highest public office in one of the largest, most complex states in the union.
She came to Harrisburg hoping for the best, but now she’s undergoing a divorce from her husband, and perhaps her career as well.
She’s had a horrific car accident, banging her head and neck, keeping her home for weeks.
And she eventually falls into the clutches of her political enemies.
Is the grand jury correct? If so, should she negotiate a deal with the Montgomery County DA to resign from office in exchange for a rap on the hand, perhaps three months’ probation for a minor charge?
Or, is the grand jury wrong?
Has Kane been unfairly singled out and disproportionately targeted for technical transgressions — leaking grand jury material — which all her antagonists in the courts and in the press have done, and continue to do, even in this case?
Is Kathleen Kane a butterfly on the torture wheel?
At this moment, a healthy skepticism is a good thing. Her political enemies are running the case, and they are refusing to make public even the most mundane filings in this case. That alone should set off alarm bells.
All this makes it particularly important for the public to try to see both sides of the coin, and maintain objectivity, and a sense of fairness.
Justice isn’t only about the law; it’s also about fairness.
And this is only the second act of the play.
Many of the above questions floating around about Kane are personal in nature, when there now are important legal and policy questions at stake.
Should we all hop on the “Kane should resign” bandwagon, when most of the drum majors of that parade — other court officials, and the press, especially the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Harrisburg Patriot-News — are actively and snidely doing the same thing they accuse her of doing?
On its surface, the grand jury presentment against Kane is sloppy and one sided. They attack Kane for attempting to rightfully defend herself with court motions, and so on.
And there are few surprises in the presentment, as someone leaked the contents of this grand jury material to the Inquirer last month. Who leaked that material? It wasn’t Rocky and Bullwinkle.
So it’s a scene out of Casablanca: everyone is shocked, shocked! to see grand jury material leaked. In reality, it’s a farce.
At her hearing in Norristown this week, Kane’s legal team raised important questions.
Most of the legal filings against her, including those for that very hearing, have been sealed from the public. When will the public be allowed to read all of the case? her lawyers rightly ask.
Is Montgomery County Judge William Carpenter in cahoots with a partisan special prosecutor, and should Carpenter get off the case, in the cause of fairness?
Should a judge micromanage the hirings and firings, and management, down to the emptying of wastebaskets, in the elected attorney general’s office?
These are indeed important constitutional questions, deserving an informed public, and deserving to be weighed by thoughtful voices from differing points of view.
As for Kane personally, what does the future hold for her should these important questions be allowed to fully and fairly play out, as they should?
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who was interned in several Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz, wrote, “What is to give light must endure burning.”
Perhaps Kane must pass through this crucible of inequities and hypocrisy to help the public better understand just how sad, unfair, hypocritical and cynical the Pennsylvania judiciary and the state’s moribund old-line media have become.
At this week’s hearing, we began to see Kane become a better lawyer, and legal strategist. Expect to see a lot of Judge Carpenter’s inappropriate rulings rightfully appealed to higher courts. And expect to see the state Supreme Court continue to split along political lines.
A trial has the potential to display to the public just how threadbare and plain bad our judicial system has become.
A public trial potentially will, moreover, drag Philadelphia Daily News reporter Chris Brennan to the stand, as he was dragged to the grand jury room, so that Brennan may fully explain to the public how he may have questionably or unethically handled or mishandled his source material that landed Kane in the courts.
Among the parts of the presentment curiously given no coverage at all by the conflicted state media is this telling statement by NAACP head J. Wyatt Mondesire, who was contacted by reporter Brennan for comment about the leaked grand jury material, which Brennan strangely offered to show Mondesire wholesale:
“‘I smelled a rat,’ Mondesire told the grand jury. ‘I know his [Brennan’s] reputation, so I wasn’t going to cooperate with him.’ Mondesire testified he was concerned that be would be tricked into saying something damaging to his reputation, and that Brennan’s contacting him was a set-up.”
Who else, if any, may have been set-up by Mr. Brennan and his troubled newspaper?
Exposing this business-as-usual, unethical back stabbing at the Philadelphia newspapers, and their double-dealing with insider sources, would be a public service by Kane.
What’s the downside for Kane if she loses at trial?
Not much, after all. She gets a few months for contempt, probably suspended, and then is forced to resign. This is not the Great Train Robbery.
But will a suburban Philadelphia jury convict a sympathetic Kane for transgressing highly technical courtroom rules?
I have my doubts.
The potential upside is, should Kane tough it out and win, we have an attorney general who deeply understands just how inherently unfair and bad our politicized court system has become, and how it needs to be changed to protect all Pennsylvanians.
That could be a very good thing.
I’ll try to write about some of these issues in future articles, with the aim of pointing Pennsylvanians toward understanding, to make an obviously bad system better.
For 50 years a Republican cabal — sometimes with the aid of compliant Democrats, has ruled every aspect of this state outside Philly and Pittsburgh. Finally we elect an attorney general not of that persuasion who threatens to end this massive conspiracy.
It would be easier if General Kane reached out for help and hopefully we will learn why she chose to go it alone.
We need to trust her a bit longer. I still have not seen any attacks on her that could be construed as bi-partisan or good government.
If she does not survive, we will just slide back to these characters running the state.
Dick Miller