Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has announced that she will resign from her post a day after being found guilty of perjury and related charges.
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Kathleen Kane was the first female attorney general in Pennsylvania, but she is now at the center of national discussion because people say her scandals are strikingly similar to Clinton’s scandals, and because Kane relied on support from the Clintons and their associates when she was campaigning for her ill-fated attorney general seat.
“There is to be absolutely no retaliation against any witness in this case, either by your mouth or by your hand”, Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy said.
Kane was found guilty of all charges that were put against her, including obstruction of the administration of law, official oppression, conspiracy, false swearing, and perjury.
In a statement Monday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said the charges were “unbecoming of the Commonwealth’s top law enforcement officer”.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Kane, 50, is the first Democrat elected to the office, though leaders in both parties welcomed her exit.
According to Politico, Kane’s attorney acknowledged she wanted the story to get out, but blamed her chief deputy, Adrian King, for leaking the files to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter via political consultant Josh Morrow.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Castor said Kane barred him from following her trial to avoid any perception that he may be retaliating against staff cooperating with prosecutors.
“The conviction on all counts was a crushing blow – I’m not going to say otherwise”, said Gerald Shargel, an attorney for Kane.
The leak grew out of Kane’s feud with former office prosecutor Frank Fina, he said.
Officials at the Attorney General’s Office said that once Ms. Kane’s resignation goes into effect Wednesday, Bruce Castor, her second-in-command, will become acting attorney general.
But the judge would not allow Kane’s lawyers to raise the email scandal in court as the motive to prosecute her.
She called for the release of the emails, but Judge William Carpenter blocked the move under what Kane called “a tortured interpretation of our state’s grand jury secrecy law”. Unlike other legislators, Mahoney had sympathy for Kane, saying she was not a traditional politician when she became attorney general and did not understand how vicious Harrisburg can be at times.
Kane’s resignation is effective at the end of the business day tomorrow.
Montgomery County Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy on Tuesday set Kane’s sentencing hearing for 10 a.m. October 24, giving county probation officials time to complete drug, alcohol and psychological evaluations of Kane.
Kane, the highly praised attorney general of Pennsylvania, is now a convicted criminal. Now, she’s facing jail time and has had her law license suspended.
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Having already lost a fight to use the porn email ruse as a defense for her actions, Kane’s defense team instead tried to paint the witnesses as untrustworthy liars looking to save their own backside.
