With Kathleen Kane’s stepping down as Pennsylvania’s attorney general after her felony conviction, the focus is now on how to restore public confidence in the scandal-ridden office. Kane finally heeded the calls to leave her position as Pennsylvania’s Attorney General after a jury found her guilty of “unprecedented” criminal charges and misconduct.
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I will do all within my power to see that the Office of Attorney General is in the best possible shape for whenever the next Attorney General arrives.
Kane was convicted Monday of charges of perjury, obstructing administration of law, official oppression, false swearing and conspiracy.
Suspecting a former state prosecutor leaked the story to the Inquirer, Kane sought payback and ordered aides to leak secret investigative information to the Philadelphia Daily News created to show that that prosecutor had never filed charges in a 2009 probe into a Philadelphia NAACP official, prosecutors said.
“I have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania and I wish them health and safety all their days”, Kane said in a short press release Tuesday afternoon.
Kane, a Democrat, was elected to office in 2012 and was Pennsylvania’s first elected female attorney general.
Most lawmakers questioned declined to say whether Kane’s conviction should land her behind bars.
On Tuesday, Wolf called Kane’s situation “unfortunate”. But a court ruled Castor’s claims were not enough to prevent the current district attorney from bringing charges. He and Kane fell out of favor around the same time, it seems. Immediately afterward, the lawyers went into a private conference with the judge, leaving Kathleen – who campaigned on a promise to uncover political intrusion in Pennsylvania – left alone at the conference table.
He testified against Kane during her trial, saying his “heart sank a little” when Kane asked him to stop an investigation into grand jury leaks.
“Kathleen and I came up with a story, about what I was going to testify to and what she was going to testify to”, Morrow said last week.
Even a former Kane supporter, Northumberland County Democratic Chairman Rodger Babnew, said last week’s four-day trial surfaced disappointing details about Kane’s conduct.
The state Senate’s Republican majority leaders had threatened a vote to order her removal from office under a constitutional provision never used in modern history.
Specifically, concerning documents in the leak of grand jury information that he said Kathleen Kane did not see, but documents that helped convict her. Castor says, it’s possible that Morrow could be prosecuted by his office or by the victor in the November election for Attorney General. Bruce earned a reputation across the commonwealth as a tough prosecutor, effective administrator and thoughtful legal mind, which is why I appointed him Inspector General.
Kathleen Kane rival Frank Fina.
“This is war”, she wrote in a 2014 email to a political strategist.
Kane hired Castor in March. We have rules that we have to abide by and there are no exceptions to that.
Beemer, 47, took on some of the office’s major legal decisions and openly clashed with Kane over the agency’s operations after the state Supreme Court suspended her law license last fall.
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The sentence for the perjury charge – the most serious offense – carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.
