She didn’t testify or call any witnesses.
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Kane listened this week as two of her once-trusted advisers told the jury that she had invented a story for the grand jury and framed someone else for the leak.
Prosecutors say she oversaw the leak of confidential information to a Philadelphia newspaper to embarrass a political rival, and then lied to a grand jury about it. Kane, 50, has said she was being targeted for taking on an “old boys network” in state government. Prosecutors argue that article set in motion a series of events where Kane sought revenge on Frank Fina, a former Philadelphia deputy district attorney who Kane claims was responsible for the negative article.
However, Morrow is under the protection of immunity, and his testimony was in contrast to one of the state’s other top witnesses, Kane’s former first deputy Adrian King.
If a Montomery County jury finds Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane guilty on both felony perjury counts she is facing, she could face as much as a $30,000 fine and 14 years in prison.
The Daily News article was based on documents from the attorney general’s office that detailed a grand jury investigation of Mondesire’s role in the transfer of money between the NAACP and New Generations, a community development nonprofit organization he directed. “We had conspired to create this story that wasn’t true”.
Her former campaign consultant says he conspired with Kane to leak the documents in 2014 and come up with a cover story afterward. When he approached Kane, he said, she told him, “Don’t worry about it”.
In his grand jury testimony, King admitted he passed an envelope containing the documents to Morrow, who then gave them to a reporter. After Kane abandoned the case, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams pursued the investigation and secured five convictions.If Kane had been just an adequate attorney general, it’s fascinating to think how far she could have gone.When Kane was elected in 2012, she became the first woman – and the first Democrat – to be elected the state’s attorney general.
“You may not release grand jury investigations!”
With the charges against Kane, prosecutors allege she orchestrated the release of secret information about the 2009 Investigating Grand Jury No. 29 to Christopher Brennan, then a reporter at The Daily News, in order to retaliate against a former state prosecutor, Frank Fina, with whom she was feuding and who she believed provided information to The Inquirer to embarrass her regarding a sting operation he was in charge of and which she shut down.
Prosecutors rested their case earlier Friday with testimony from the fiancée of the late Philadelphia civil rights leader at the center of a 2009 criminal probe Kane is accused of leaking to discredit rivals.
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Morrow’s decision to come clean with authorities came shortly after he was confronted with phone records and text messages and emails between himself and Kane, according to trial testimony by investigators. It was only then, he says, the burden of lying became too much that he made a decision to come forward. He said Kane knew what documents were in the package.
