“She said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal, we have more important things to do, ‘” Beemer said Wednesday, recalling the June 2014 phone call as he testified at Kane’s trial at Montgomery County Court in Norristown.
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Kane, 50, a first-term Democrat, faces charges of perjury, obstructing administration of law, abuse of office and false swearing in connection with allegations she orchestrated the illegal disclosure of confidential investigative information and secret grand jury information to the media and then engaged in acts created to hide and cover up her conduct.
Bruce Beemer, who headed the criminal section, testified that he was stunned when he saw the Daily News article because he knew the Mondesire leak must have come from their office.
In testimony this morning, Mr. Beemer said he called Ms. Kane the morning the article ran. Co prosecutor in Kane’s trial, Michele Henry, told the jury that Kane broke the law when she released the information. A March 2014 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer was critical of Kane for quietly dropping the case after she took office in 2013.
Prosecutor Michelle Henry produced a copy of handwritten notes Mr. Beemer made of that conversation as corroborating evidence.
Later that summer, it became clear that a supervising judge had appointed a special prosecutor to assist with a grand jury investigation of the leak. “I viewed it as quite problematic”.
Beemer followed Kane’s order not to look into the leak, he said, but remained concerned.
“My heart sank a little”, Beemer said, adding: “I had been operating under the belief that this was the right course of action that we really should get to the bottom of all of this”. She also is charged with perjury for making false statements in a grand jury hearing about her knowledge of the grand jury records, her involvement in their release and the resulting newspaper article.
He was surprised by Ms. Kane’s response.
Kane’s attorneys have argued that she only authorized the release of nonsecret information relating to who was charged – and who wasn’t – by her predecessors. “None of us were sworn into that grand jury”, she testified, according to the arrest affidavit.
Months later, in another conversation in which Beemer said he was reluctant to do something Kane requested, he said she told him: “Bruce, if I were taken out of here in handcuffs, what do you think my last act would be?”
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Beemer replied: “I don’t think anybody can stop the attorney general from doing what she wants to do”.
