She is also accused of enlisting aides to spy on office workers, review staff members’ emails and keep tabs on a grand jury investigation into the alleged leak.
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But her stock began to fall through a series of political dramas. Kane and her prosecutors have painted wildly different pictures of the circumstances that led to the charges.
She was back in court today for a procedural hearing, which paves the way for her case to go for a full trial after hearing prosecution evidence.
“The entire story hasn’t come out yet”. “But I think that the hearing on Monday is an important event in the timeline of this case”.
Judge Cathleen Kelly Rebar warned Shargel that he was “far afield” in invoking pornography – a central theme of Kane’s public defense – because prosecutors had not delved into motive during the hearing.
Montgomery County prosecutors charged Kane this month following the suggestions of a grand jury.
A lawyer for Pennsylvania’s attorney general says charges that she used her position to smear a civil rights leader’s reputation are moot because he’d already been the subject of negative newspaper articles. Kane is scheduled for arraignment on October 14.
Shargel said he expects the state’s top lawyer to be acquitted of the charges.
The last half of Kane’s preliminary hearing here revolved around painstaking recitations by Montgomery County Det.
Bradbury addressed Kane’s assertions in her testimony that she was not covered by grand jury secrecy rules as applied to the Mondesire case because she never had any role before that 2009 grand jury.
Detective Paul Bradbury, who investigated Kane, stated the leak prompted Mondesire “nice private misery and misery to his household” and compelled him to shut his charity when donations dried up after the newspaper story.
According to prosecutors, Kane illegally leaked grand jury information to embarrass Frank Fina, who was chief deputy attorney general under the previous governor, Republican Tom Corbett, and had led the investigation of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on child sex abuse charges.
Most of Monday’s testimony flowed directly from the heart of the 42-page affidavit of probable cause filed against the embattled Attorney General on August 6. However, Kane’s team maintains that identifying additional people involved in the scandal could be perceived as retaliation against witnesses in her case.
Under cross-examination, Shargel asked Bradbury if investigators had ever fingerprinted the documents Kane alleged had sent to a man who worked on her campaign. Kane’s spokesman Chuck Ardo says his boss reimbursed the state for the satellite feed of her news conference.
Kane testified under oath to the grand jury that she had no knowledge of the memorandum and related documents, according to the complaint. Shargel stated Mondesire could not lose his fame a second time.
Kane, 49, followed an entourage of law enforcement agents and her twin sister Ellen Granahan Goffer as she walked by a corridor filled with reporters and photographers.
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The press swarmed Kane both as she entered the courtroom and when she left it. “How do you feel?” one reporter asked.
