Kane thought Fina tipped the Inky that Kane refused to prosecute a corruption case over racial bias; Fina fired back, accusing Kane of leaking to the DN the department’s probe regarding the NAACP leader, J. Whyatt Mondesire.
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Henry began opening arguments with words she attributed to Kane herself: “Revenge is best served cold”. Kane is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, official oppression and false swearing.
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A desire for revenge drove Pennsylvania’s attorney general to leak secret criminal files to the press to embarrass a rival and then lie about it to a grand jury, prosecutors said as Kathleen Kane’s perjury and obstruction trial opened Tuesday. She insists she never broke the law. “The defendant wanted to get revenge against someone”.
Kane is accused of leaking confidential information from a 2009 grand jury to a writer from The Philadelphia Daily News in 2014. Kane faces perjury and other charges related to the alleged leak of secret grand jury materials.
Shargel blamed the illegal leak on King and Morrow, who he said told shifting stories about their roles during a grand jury investigation.
Shargel described his client as the daughter of hardworking parents who was “not born with a silver spoon in her mouth”.
Exactly one year after the state attorney general was arrested, booked, and fingerprinted in Norristown, Kathleen Kane was in court listening to a deputy prosecutor say she is a criminal because of her need for revenge. Bradbury from his 2015 investigation at Kane’s Harrisburg office.
“It does not make sense that she would risk her reputation, her career that she worked so hard to build to embarrass someone she had met, at the most twice, by knowingly breaking the law”, said Shargel.
He says he immediately recognized the information as coming for the AG’s office, and, in his opinion, it was protected by grand jury secrecy laws.
He noted her election as Pennsylvania’s first woman attorney general was historic, but was quickly cut short by an objection from the prosecution. He said she did not commit a crime, however, because it was an “honest mistake” as she simply did not remember doing so.
Detective Paul Bradbury was the first witness to take the stand Tuesday as prosecutors began building their case against Kathleen Kane. The judge told jurors the trial will last one week, “give or take”.
Bradbury said county investigators re-questioned some witnesses who had appeared before the grand jury and searched for other evidence that verified or corroborated the grand jury’s findings.
They then believe she lied under oath to cover it up.
The state Supreme Court voted to strip Kane of the law license, a move she attacked given that two justices were forced to step down as part of her crusade to reveal state employees who traded offensive, racist and sometimes pornographic emails.
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Another deputy, Bruce Beemer, testified that he was stunned when he saw the resulting news story because he knew the leak must have come from their office. This information included a memo and a transcript involving that grand jury investigation, according to Beemer.
