Pennsylvania’s attorney general has gone on trial in a perjury and obstruction case that prosecutors say stems from her drive for political revenge. This is the previous year of her first term, and she has said she is not seeking reelection. Kane wanted revenge, broke the law to get it and then lied to cover up her actions, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday morning. Kane is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, official oppression and false swearing.
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“Where’s my article?” Henry said Kane wrote to her political consultant Josh Morrow in 2014, before a newspaper article was published using the information Kane is accused of leaking to the Philadelphia Daily News.
Ms. Kane, 50, was charged previous year after prosecutors said she had illegally leaked secret grand jury information to embarrass former state prosecutor Frank Fina – and later lied about it.
Henry said Kane, 50, the state’s first female and first Democrat to be elected attorney general, sought to embarrass prosecutor Frank Fina because she believed he was the source of a 2014 Philadelphia Inquirer story about Kane’s decision to drop a bribery prosecution of several black Democratic legislators.
The potential witness list in the perjury trial of Pennsylvania’s attorney general includes prosecutors, judges, journalists and former top aides to the embattled office holder.
A Montgomery County judge ruled in July that Kane can not present a “vindictive prosecution” defense, barring the attorney general’s team from introducing the offensive emails as evidence.
Kane has reportedly portrayed the prosecution as revenge for uncovering the sharing of pornography among prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys over state servers. They say she has done nothing wrong.
In his opening remarks to the jury, lead defense counsel Gerald L. Shargel said Kane “did not leak secret grand jury information nor did she lie in her testimony before a grand jury”.
Former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said Kane doesn’t need a law license to act as attorney general.
Shargel described his client as the daughter of hardworking parents who was “not born with a silver spoon in her mouth”. “She worked hard to achieve her success”, he said, accusing prosecutors of “trying to make up a feud”.
That leak of secret grand jury materials pertains to a 2009 investigation Fina headed into former NAACP president J. Whyatt Mondesire, who is now deceased and was never charged. From time to time, Steele returned to the projected images of documents to support their assertions of Kane’s untruthfulness.
“My reaction was, ‘Who’s giving out police interviews or reports out of our office?'” he said. This information included a memo and a transcript involving that grand jury investigation, according to Beemer. “I thought we had a problem”.
They also called Bruce Beemer to the stand.
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County Detective Paul Bradbury, the first prosecution witness, testified authorities discovered evidence that Kane signed a so-called “secrecy oath” on her second day in office on January 17, 2013, promising her secrecy for statewide investigating grand juries one through 32.
